Pull Me from the Dark
by liremo
Summary: She knew that it was a bad idea. SHIELD was giving her the first chance she'd ever had at a semi-normal life, and she shouldn't be risking it. But she'd made a promise, and there was nothing that could make her break it. She was going to get him out, no matter the cost. Bucky/OC
1. A Barely Breathing Story

A/N: Wow, okay, so I'm incredibly nervous because I haven't published anything on this site in almost 7 years, but here we are! Just a quick note before and then there will be a longer note at the bottom. Anything that is underlined is in a language other than English. Back in the day I would use Google translate when I switched to another language, but that thing never translates correctly and it's just a pain to put all the translations at the bottom. So I'll try this out. If you guys don't like it, I'll just go back and add the words in the actual language instead.

Now to the reading, and I'll have another note at the end!

* * *

**2007**

She'd never been in an interrogation room before. Once she had stood outside one and watched through the window as a man was tortured, but she'd never been on the mirror side of the glass before. She stared at her own reflection, wondering what the people on the other side thought of her less than impressive appearance.

Beneath the table, she picked at her own fingernails impulsively, a tell for when she was nervous that she hadn't acted on in years. She thought of Miller as she did it. He'd been her primary trainer after she was taken from the care of the man with the monocle, and he used to have her shocked when she did it. There was no one to punish her here, however, and she lapsed back into the habit easily.

Though her hands were free to pick at her nails to her heart's content, her feet were shackled to the chair they'd left her in. They were smart not to trust her. She would have used her gift the moment they left if they hadn't made sure she was tied down somehow.

The door opened finally, and though she'd been expecting the man with the bow who'd brought her here, a redheaded woman entered instead. She was short, shapely, and very pretty, decked out in a black body suit that made it easy to spot at least 8 weapons strapped to her body. Her walk as she approached the chair across the table was more a strut than anything, and she sat down with an easy grace. The redhead was very obviously dangerous, and it made her sit a little straighter in her seat.

"So, what do I call you?"

She'd stopped picking at her nails the moment the woman walked in, but the question made it very hard not to start up again. She hadn't yet decided what she would do when inevitably asked for information. Though that question was simple enough, the answer was complex. So she offered the simplest response.

"Nineteen."

"Is that why you've got that brand, because your name is Nineteen?"

Nineteen struggled not to reach up and touch the two numbers burned into the skin on the side of her neck, but she lost the fight. The raised skin was as familiar to her as the freckles on her face or the blonde shade of her hair. She could barely remember a time without the number etched into her.

"No," she finally answered.

"No?" the redhead repeated quizzically.

"I'm Nineteen because of the brand. I was the Nineteenth test subject."

The redhead sat forward in her chair, resting her forearms on the table and folding her hands together. "And what happened to one through eighteen?"

"They're dead."

She'd been hoping the bluntness of the answer might surprise the redhead, but she didn't look phased at all. Her expression was impossible to read, and there wasn't even a flicker of emotion in her eyes. It was clear why they'd chosen her to extract what they could.

"Before you were Nineteen, did you have another name?"

The question made Nineteen's entire body go still. She tried very hard not to remember those days. It had been eleven years since anyone had called her by that particular name, and it was something she kept close to her chest, one of the only things she had to herself. She wasn't about to give it up now.

The redhead must have sensed her reluctance, and she moved on without an answer. "I'm told that you have an ability."

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"You know what it is. Your friend with the bow who dragged me here saw it."

She nodded. "Invisibility. But is that it?"

"Isn't that enough?"

Nineteen's response seemed to amuse the redhead, and she smirked. "Why don't you just answer my question?"

Making an irritated sound in the back of her throat, Nineteen decided to reply in French, just to make things more difficult. _"_Yes, you oversized Barbie. All I can do is make myself disappear_."_

"Did you get to play with Barbies much, being a spy?_"_

Though she hastily tried to mask her surprise at the redhead's fluid response in perfect French, Nineteen didn't think she quite succeeded, judging by the way her smirk widened. She decided instead to try to regain some of her dignity back.

"Are you here to talk about what dolls I played with as a child, or are you here to find out who I work for and what I was doing at Fort Meade? I promise you that the response to either question will disappoint."

The redhead's eyes narrowed slightly, though not in a menacing way, more like she was trying to seem genuinely curious. "And why's that?"

"Because I truly don't know the answer. I'm told where to go and what to do, and then I report back. I follow orders, and I don't ask questions. Unfortunately for you, I'm just a small cog in a bigger machine."

"And just what exactly is that machine? _Who_ do you work for?"

Nineteen sighed in frustration, tossing her head back for a moment before fixing her eyes pointedly at the redhead's. "I. Don't. Know."

"Do you expect me to believe that?"

"I really couldn't care less what you believe. It's the truth. They never told me _anything_."

The redhead cocked a perfect eyebrow. "And yet they place enough trust in you to allow you to carry out a mission like stealing information from the NSA?"

"That's exactly why they trust me," Nineteen answered bitterly. "They needed a puppet. Someone who would obey without question and had the ability to go undetected. Who better than a scared little girl who can't stop accidentally becoming invisible? So they took me and they trained me to be this. I could steal your shirt off your back or listen to every conversation you have for a month without you even realizing I was there, but I can't ask a damn question because I was taught that questions lead to nothing but pain!"

At the end of the impassioned speech, the redhead looked surprised for the first time. Nineteen had realized while she was speaking that she was probably giving away too much, but she couldn't seem to stop the words from tumbling out. By the end, she'd almost been shouting, and the feel of her voice leaving her throat at that volume had felt alien. Usually when she was being that loud, she was screaming as they punished her.

The redhead glanced over her shoulder at the two-way mirror and then stood. "Thank you for your cooperation. That's enough for now."

She left as quickly as she'd arrived, and Nineteen was left to sit and stew in her own frustration. She did her best to calm herself down, knowing that this would not be the last interrogation. There was a hard choice to make here. After all, while she didn't know much about the people she worked for, including even the name of the organization, there were _some_ things she knew.

So now she had to decide: exactly how much was she willing to part with? And what would they do to her if they sensed that she was withholding?

**1997**

"Freight car._"_

The last words rang out like the final swing of a hammer to a nail. They reverberated around the cavernous room, and when the echo faded, so did the last resistance of the Soldier as he slumped boneless in the chair.

"Soldier?_"_

"Ready to comply."

The handler shut the red book with a barely noticeable sigh of relief. He was a fairly new handler, and even though the words never failed to bring the Soldier completely to heel, he had recently witnessed the hulking man easily kill all 6 of his guards in a confused rage. The sight of their stab wounds and caved in skulls had left quite the impression.

In English with just the barest touch of a Russian accent, the handler said, "Your orders are to eliminate a threat to our cause, an American senator. You will be debriefed, armed, and given a team. Follow."

There was a leftover tingle of pain in the Soldier's body, a thrum of electricity that sent shocks to his fingers and caused them to twitch. A cold lingered about him despite the warmth of the room, chilling his very bones. Though he didn't remember what had caused the pain or the chill, something about the situation rang familiar. He didn't bother chasing the inkling of a memory. He'd been given a direct order. A mission.

All that ever mattered was the mission.

Down a labyrinthine hallway, taking too many turns to keep track of, the Soldier followed his handler, the usual half dozen guards on his tail. They reached a dead end at a large set of double doors with yellowed glass windows in them. The handler pushed them open, revealing a room crowded with people.

There was a sparring ring in the center, closed off by metal rails to mark a small arena of sorts. Guards dressed all in their all-black uniforms and doctors in white coats surrounded the ring, observing the commotion within. The Soldier's handler made to stride through the room to the opposite door, but paused upon seeing a man wearing army fatigues standing slightly apart from the rest. The handler redirected their course and halted at the man's side with a nod of greeting. The Soldier took up his usual position slightly to the right and a few steps back, hovering in a way he didn't realize was menacing.

"You made it," the handler remarked to his new companion.

The man, tall and broad with a hook nose and general expression of bitterness, nodded curtly. "The asset barely survived. It hasn't taken well to its new training regiment."

The handler cocked one bushy eyebrow. "Don't tell me Strucker was coddling it."

"Not exactly. He was running so many of his tests on it that it was barely alive when the Director took over. Its recovery has been slow."

"What of its gift? Just how strong is it?"

The Soldier tuned their conversation out, finding it impertinent to the mission. He looked toward the men surrounding the fighting ring just as one stepped aside, and he was given a clear view of the show.

There were three guards dressed in black combat pants and black t-shirts, the usual sparring gear, and they were all covered in sweat and breathing heavy, clearly having been going at it for quite awhile. Their target was kneeling on the ground in the center of the ring, and the Soldier noted that it was obviously just a boy, perhaps no older than ten. He was on his knees surrounded by his opponents, one hand bracing himself on the ground and the other clutching his ribs in pain.

"Up, Nineteen!" a doctor barked toward the ring.

The child flinched and then raised his head as he attempted to stand and despite the eye nearly swollen shut and the blood pouring out of his nose and mouth, the Soldier noted that "he" was unmistakably a she.

The girl, Nineteen, stood on shaky legs. She looked incredibly small surrounded by the three burly men, and the pallor of her pale skin was sickly beneath the sharp contrast of the crimson smeared all over her face. Her short, shaggy blond hair was sticking up in every direction. It had the appearance of having recently been cut with haste by someone who either didn't know or didn't care what they were doing.

Nineteen was barely on her feet for a few moments before one of the guards delivered a sharp backhand to her face. Her head snapped to the side, blood spraying over the floor, and she hit the ground hard, head bouncing off the cement.

"Use your gift, stupid child!"

The doctor's command barely seemed to reach the girl as she lay there dazed. However, after a moment, she appeared to blink at the edges, the outline of her body disappearing before reappearing rapidly. Then her whole body began to follow, so that one second she was there before being gone a second later, only to again reappear. It rather resembled a light bulb that was nearing the end of its life cycle, flickering before it would eventually go out.

The sight might have been remarkable to most people, but the Soldier felt nothing as he watched a person become invisible before his eyes. Nothing ever really surprised him considering that he'd have to feel emotions at all to feel surprise. Watching a little girl being beaten by grown men, watching that same little girl suddenly disappear…it all merely faded into the background in his mind as inconsequential in the face of his purpose.

The handler and the other man were still talking when the girl lost whatever tenuous grip she had over her power and became fully visible again. She was gasping with effort, her chest heaving, and a small sob escaped her lips as she rolled to her side, curling in on herself.

Her three opponents turned and eyed the doctor who'd been shouting orders. With an expression of disgust, the doctor waved his hand dismissively. At that cue, Nineteen was converged upon by all three attackers, who began mercilessly kicking her. She screamed at first, but one of them landed a boot to her chest that sent all of the air out of her lungs in a rush.

The Soldier felt a sudden jolt as his heart kicked into overdrive, pounding in his chest. Then he was no longer standing in that room, watching a little girl be savagely abused. He was in a vaguely familiar parking lot, watching a group of teenagers viciously beat up a much smaller boy. He had blue eyes, blond hair just like the girl, but unlike the girl, he was still trying to fight back from the ground, swinging his fist out toward calves and knees as hard as he could.

The vision faded as fast as it had appeared, but the Soldier was left reeling. There was an overwhelming sensation in his chest, lingering from the version of himself in the hallucination. He acted on it without thinking, and within the blink of an eye, the room erupted into chaos.

The Soldier strode across the room toward the sparring ring. When a guard turned around and eyed him with surprise, he threw out his metal fist. It connected with the man's chest, sending him flying. A doctor attempted to grab his shoulder, but he snapped the man's arm without even bothering to look at him.

Leaping over the rail surrounding the arena, the Soldier landed silently on his feet in an offensive position, facing the three men who'd been attacking the girl. They'd all stopped and were facing him with obvious shock. The moment they caught the look in his eyes though, they knew what was about to happen.

The Soldier swept the legs out from under the man nearest to him, and the moment the man was down, he punched him in the face as hard as he could with his metal arm. The man's skull collapsed easily with a sickening dent that fit the Soldier's fist. A second one grabbed his shoulder from behind, and he grasped the man's wrist and yanked, flinging him over his shoulder. The guard's spine connected with the metal rail and let out a sharp crack before he fell motionless to the ground. The last man attempted to back away when the Soldier rounded on him, hands up placatingly, but the Soldier ignored that and grabbed the man by his head, twisting until he felt his neck give. Before the body even hit the floor, the Soldier had dropped down at Nineteen's side, crouched over her defensively with his metal hand clenched in a fist.

It was all over in a matter of seconds, and the entire room came to a shocked stillness. The remaining guards posted around the room were pointing their guns at the Soldier, awaiting his next move or an order to kill. Neither came.

Nineteen was letting out little gasping breaths beneath him, most likely due to broken ribs. The Soldier could feel her eyes on him. Against his better judgment, which was screaming at him to keep his eyes on the potential threats, he glanced down at her. She stared back up at him with hazel eyes that were nearly cartoonish in their enormity. He also noticed a smattering of freckles beneath the layer of blood on her face, and she was staring at him like she couldn't quite believe her eyes.

"Soldier, stand down."

The order, given in Russian by his handler, made the Soldier's whole body jerk in its need to comply, but he didn't move away. He stared down the men with their guns raised, ready to fight back if attacked.

"Soldier! Stand down immediately!"

His body began to quake. He couldn't think of anything except his unequivocal need to stick to the mission, and his mission was theirs: to bring order. To do that, he needed to comply. But something in the back of his mind was telling him that this was his mission too. He protected people. Somehow he knew that he always had. Now he was tasked with the impossible choice of deciding between conflicting missions. His head was splitting with pain at the effort of trying to figure out what was going on in his mind.

That was when he spotted his handler removing the red book from his jacket. He opened it to a certain page and scanned it, his finger tracing the lines he was reading until he came to the passage he was looking for.

"Garden," he read in Russian. The Soldier knew what was happening without recognizing the words. He stood, preparing to attack. "Standard. Velvet."

Before the Soldier could even take a step forward his eyes rolled into the back of his head as he became completely unconscious. He teetered on his feet and then crashed to the floor on his back with a thump from his body and a loud clanging from his metal arm.

The handler snapped the book shut, eyeing the unconscious man with anger. "Take him back to the chair. Have him wiped again."

Nineteen managed to sit up enough to watch the other men remove him from the room. It took four of them due to his rather substantial size. Others worked on moving the dead bodies of the men who'd been helping to train her only moments before, and for a moment, she was forgotten in the chaos.

She watched the Soldier being removed from the room, eyes tracing the impressive form of his metal arm and lingering on the red star at his shoulder. There was a feeling in her gut, one she hadn't experienced for quite a time now. She couldn't identify it off the top of her head, but it was warm as she regarded the man who'd risked his life to stop her from being beaten.

When someone finally remembered her, one of the doctors who attended her, a rather nasty female with jet black hair, she was yanked up by her bicep. Pain shrieked through her abdomen, but she barely made a sound at the sensation. She was growing fairly accustomed to agony.

The Soldier was gone from the room, but Nineteen continued to stare at the doors he'd been taken through long after he was gone. The doctor was poking at her ribs to locate the breaks, and pain was lancing through her again. So she clung to the sudden warmth in her belly, realizing that the reaction was in response to the first act of kindness anyone had shown her in years. She'd forgotten what it was like, but now she clutched it, committing to memory each detail of how she felt right at that moment.

Tomorrow, the pain would go on. These men were dead, but new ones were always there to take their place. Again, she would surely fail at harnessing the gift that evaded her more often than not, and again, she would be beaten for it. But tomorrow, and every day after that, she would have this feeling. She would keep it like a memento, taking it out and unwrapping it like a treasure when everything else around her seemed to be dark and cold.

Because she was suddenly reminded in that moment by that strange, terrifying man that not everyone wanted to hurt her. And perhaps if she found another, she'd finally be able to get away.

* * *

A/N: So this chapter is probably going to be the shortest one. I'm typically much more long-winded than this, but for the beginning, it just felt right to end it here.

This story is going to jump around between past and present for awhile. I hope it's not too confusing, but I'm trying to make it purposefully on the ambiguous side as the plot unfolds. It's something different that I've never tried before, so I'm really praying that everyone likes it.

I haven't come up with a schedule for updates yet since my life is a little chaotic what with finals happening and having a 4-month-old, but the next chapter is basically done except for edits. In the meantime, please review to let me know what you think!

Thanks for reading!


	2. When Did I Lose Myself?

**2007**

Natasha and Clint stood outside the interrogation room, watching their prisoner stare back. Though Nineteen couldn't see them, her eyes would occasionally meet with Natasha's purely by chance, and she couldn't quite find words to describe the way the careful blank look in the younger woman's eyes made her feel. If she was being honest with herself, it made her feel like she was the one looking in a mirror.

They'd had Nineteen in custody for over a day, and she seemed to be on a hunger strike. Her third uneaten meal was sitting untouched on the table in front of her, but that was so far the only way she'd tried fighting back. Guards had taken her to and from the restroom several times with no incident. She wasn't going invisible to try and confuse them. She was just sitting in the chair, looking around in vague disinterest.

"Can't believe that's who I've been looking for all this time," Clint muttered, finally breaking their long silence. "I mean, look at her. She looks like she could still be a teenager, for fuck's sake."

Natasha did study her, eyes roaming from her sandy blonde hair to the dirty, well-worn military style boots that peeked out from under the table she sat behind. Her heel was tapping the ground, but the tight set of her jaw suggested it was more from frustration than anxiety. Despite the display of annoyance, her entire physicality was rather disappointing. There was an obvious leanness to the muscle in her uncovered arms and an intelligent, calculating edge to her eyes, but she still looked much too mousy for someone that had been causing so much trouble.

"They're smart to use her," Natasha replied. "so men like you can underestimate her."

Clint smirked, shooting his closest friend a look from the corner of his eye. "Well, I have been known to have a soft spot for conflicted female spies that work for the bad guys."

Natasha chose to change the subject rather than respond. "She said she was the nineteenth test subject. What exactly could that mean?"

Clint shrugged. "Maybe they did something that made her the way she is. She can _turn invisible_."

Natasha looked at him in disbelief. He sounded almost excited. "You say that like it isn't a really bad thing that someone is experimenting on kids to make enhanced spies."

"Oh, it's pretty goddamn awful. I'm just trying to see the silver lining."

She finally tore her eyes away from Nineteen, turning and leaning her back against the wall next to the window instead. Clint was staring at Natasha again, and she recognized the look. She hated it because it meant that she was being too open, and he was reading her easily. It wouldn't do any good to try and rearrange her facial expression. He'd already seen.

"She's on the wrong team, Nat. Whatever you're thinking-"

"Was that her choice?" Natasha interrupted. "Sounded to me like they've been making up her mind for her since she was a kid. You heard exactly what I heard."

"Yeah, which means I also heard her say that she's not going to give us anything. Whether or not she chose it doesn't matter because she's picking the side she wants to be on right now."

Natasha chose her next words very carefully. "She could be telling the truth. Maybe she doesn't know."

Clint groaned. "Where is this bleeding heart bullshit coming from?"

"It's not a 'bleeding heart'. It's experience, experience with what she went through. When I was working for the KGB, do you think they were giving me background information on targets? No, they were handing me a gun and telling me where to aim it, and I knew that asking questions was…unwise."

Clint sighed, glancing back at Nineteen through the glass. "Have you considered that she knows exactly who you are? She could be playing you knowing that you'd see a certain someone if she did the whole scared little girl song and dance."

Natasha nodded once. "Of course it did, but I'm the one who questioned her. I've done thousands of interrogations, and I can tell when someone is lying. She wasn't. The second the words came out of her mouth she looked like she wanted to grab them out of the air and stuff them back in."

"Maybe she's just better than you."

"There's no one better than me."

Clint smirked again, a low chuckle rumbling in his chest. "You're right about that."

They lapsed back into silence for a moment, Clint watching Nineteen and Natasha watching Clint. She could see the wheels turning in his head, and she could also see the moment where he started bending.

"Let's say I'm entertaining…whatever it is you want to do here. What _exactly _am I agreeing to?"

Natasha folded her arms across her chest, considering the answer herself. "Make her an offer in exchange for as much information as she can give us. Whether she turns or not she'll need protection considering half the intelligence agencies in the world want her crucified, so that's a card we can play. If her intel proves useful in the end and if she's willing, we can bring her into the fold. You can't deny that her ability would be valuable, and she's obviously well-trained."

"What if she refuses?"

"I stop asking nicely and get what we need from her."

Clint raised an eyebrow. "And if she changes her mind _after_ we bring her in and tries to run home with a couple secrets of ours?"

"Then I'll put a bullet in her head myself."

He ran a tired hand over his face, and even though he was still hesitating, Natasha knew him well enough to know that she'd already won.

"I'll call Fury, see what I can do," he finally conceded. He turned to leave the room but paused long enough to call over his shoulder, "If I lose my job over this, I'm taking you down with me."

"As long as you promise that we can finally take that vacation in Bali after," she retorted.

After Clint was gone, Natasha shrugged away from the wall and went back to staring at Nineteen. The girl was still looking at the mirror before her, though now she was fiddling with her nails in her lap. Natasha knew that if this was a mistake, then it could potentially be a very, _very_ costly one. The girl was very good at getting away, for obvious reasons, and if she did decide to stay just long enough to get intel on SHIELD to bring back to her handlers, then Natasha knew she'd end up on the chopping block herself. And this time no words from Nick Fury and Clint Barton were going to save her. But her gut was telling her that no matter how risky it was, that this was what she should be doing.

And her gut was rarely wrong.

* * *

A pair of men came to take Nineteen to the restroom several hours after the redhead left. The sight of them had initially made her stomach flip over. They were dressed nearly identical to the guards from the facility where she was raised, dressed in all black with big rifles and flat top haircuts. For a moment she thought Miller was going to stride through the door and break her fingers, though her fears turned out to be unfounded when they just started to unlock the shackles around her ankles. The guards ignored her reluctance to follow them once they freed her from the chair, and one pulled her up and lead her down a short hallway to a tiny bathroom. They encountered no one during the walk, but she spotted a half-eaten bagel on a table and a stack of stapled papers that were still flipped open to a certain page and she realized that they'd cleared the area before she was brought out. The idea that they thought her that dangerous almost brought a smile to her face.

After the trip to the bathroom, Nineteen was returned to her chair and strapped back in. She spotted the opening when the guard knelt by her feet to lock the shackles, knowing how easy it would be to reach out and break his neck before he was able to reattach her to the chair. But rarely had she ever had to kill anyone before, and the idea wasn't exactly her favorite. Besides, up until now they hadn't treated her too badly. If she killed one of them, that would most likely change very quickly.

A sandwich and a bottle of water were delivered to her, but she didn't touch either of them for fear that the food may be drugged to make her more compliant. Instead, she picked at her fingernails more and stared at the two-way mirror, hoping she was making eye contact with someone and making them uncomfortable.

Hours later, a guard came in to remove her uneaten sandwich, and then she was left alone again. With nothing to do, Nineteen folded her arms on the table, rested her head on them, and slept. She had no way of knowing what time it was, but she was exhausted nevertheless. Her sleep had always been light, so she trusted that if they suddenly decided to burst into the room and kill her, she would wake up.

When the door did eventually open, it did indeed wake her up, but it was only a guard delivering another sandwich. She wasn't sure how long she'd slept, but she did have to wipe an embarrassing amount of drool from her mouth and arm. She glanced at the two-way mirror, hoping no one was watching at that moment. She did drink the water they brought her that time, though she sniffed at it to try and determine whether there was anything questionable in it first.

It continued like that. Nineteen didn't eat, someone came to retrieve her uneaten food, she was taken to the bathroom, and then she slept. Time ceased to make sense. Her best judgment was that she'd been captured for around 72 hours, though her inability to judge how long she was sleeping muddled that guess up a bit. Her stomach was aching with hunger, and she eyed the most recent sandwich they'd delivered to her covetously.

Some time later, her staring contest with the sandwich was interrupted when the door to the interrogation room opened and the redhead reentered. There was a change in the woman's demeanor that was immediately noticeable. She seemed friendlier, which put Nineteen on edge.

"I seem to have been a little rude earlier when we spoke," the redhead began with a small smile. "You can call me Natasha."

Nineteen didn't reply. She didn't want to call the woman anything other than a few colorful obscenities, which she figured wouldn't be very appreciated. If Natasha was bothered by her silence, she didn't show it as she continued on. "I work for an intelligence agency that has been trying to find you for quite some time."

Nineteen raised her eyebrows, not even bothering to try to hide her surprise. "For what?"

"You've been on the radar for several organizations. It's not exactly normal for the most circumspect people in the world to have regular security breaches, especially not when the person doing the breaching is literally untraceable." She paused, smirking again. "They call you the Specter."

Nineteen snorted, unable to conceal her amusement. "How mysterious."

"Indeed. However, now that we have you in custody, we've been put in what you could call an awkward position. As I mentioned, we weren't the only ones trying to find you. You've made a pretty decent list of enemies. The NSA, KGB, Mossad…frankly, Nineteen, you're lucky that we found you."

"And why is that?"

"Because you're being offered sandwiches and not dangling by your wrists from the ceiling while someone flays the skin off your feet."

Nineteen flinched at both the words and the easy way Natasha said them. "So I'm guessing by your forthrightness that you're done beating around the bush."

"I am."

"Then get to the point."

"My point is that my…employers are willing to protect you from the people who want to hurt you in exchange for what you know."

Nineteen sighed and ran a frustrated hand over her face. "I already told you I know very little."

"And I believe that. I'm the one in this room because I'm very good at spotting a lie, even if you were trained to hide tells, which you obviously were. No matter how insignificant the information may seem to you, it could help us."

"And why would I want to help you?" Nineteen snapped. "You say you can protect me from those who want to hurt me, but I assure you, pain isn't new to me. The torturer would just have a different accent than I'm used to."

"You could be saving lives. We're the good guys. All that we want to do is keep the people who've been hurting you from hurting anyone else."

That gave Nineteen pause. She'd always known of course that the people who she worked for weren't good people. After all, she'd only been a child when they'd used her for experiments and barely a teenager when they began to mold her into a spy. They beat her, tased her, and starved her to get her to do what they wanted until there was no fight left in her body. She was certain that there wasn't a line they wouldn't cross to get her to do their bidding, and people like that weren't good people. In fact, she realized at this point that it had been so long since she'd encountered a truly good person that she didn't know what they looked like anymore.

"How do I know that?" she finally asked, angry at herself for how weak and small she sounded. "Am I just supposed to trust blindly that working with you would be an improvement? Because trust isn't something that comes naturally to me."

Natasha shifted in her seat, pressing her back against the chair and crossing her legs. She eyed Nineteen contemplatively before finally speaking in a reluctant, slow tone. "I didn't always work for the people that I do now. I was trained from a young age to do…awful things, and I did them for awful people. I was offered a chance to get out, to do something better, and that's what I'm doing now. I can extend the same offer to you."

"And what if I don't want to be better?"

Natasha's lips quirked at that, but Nineteen was unable to tell if it was in amusement or annoyance. "Then I would remind you just how damaging your information could potentially be. You might not want to reform, but there must be a part of you that wants to get even."

In all of the years that Nineteen had spent as a forced operative, she had never once considered revenge. She had certainly resented them, had wished that everything would come crumbling to the ground around them, but she had never thought about the possibility of getting back at them herself. She'd had her escape plans at one time, but they'd never factored in a retaliatory element. In those situations, she'd always just pictured running as far as she could and never looking back. Even now, she had trouble conjuring up enough emotion to want to get them back. Years spent stamping on everything she felt so they couldn't exploit it was suddenly turning against her. It had been a long time since she'd experienced much beyond apathy and vague agitation. But then a memory came unbidden to Nineteen, one that she had spent a lot of time trying not to dwell on. It was so fresh in her mind it was if it had taken place only seconds ago.

She heard the screams leave the lips of the only person she had any human connection with, watched the bright flash of electricity as a machine erased any memory he had of her for the last time.

Rage filled her so suddenly it nearly took her breath away. A dam had broken, and she felt every burning flame of her anger lick up her spine until the room itself felt hot. At the time the memory had happened, she'd only felt remorse and pain. For most of her life she hadn't felt anything except fear. But this was so much more than that. It was all-consuming, an unavoidable lightning bolt bursting through her mind.

Subconsciously, Nineteen knew that she'd begun to flicker, a term she used for when she lost control of her power and began to disappear and reappear rapidly. Natasha had reached down and was now resting a hand on her holstered pistol as she watched her fade in and out of sight.

"Nineteen," she said slowly, "you need to calm down."

Nineteen wasn't sure what Natasha was seeing on her face. She'd lost the ability to control her expression when she'd begun to flicker. It was something that only happened when she was stressed or overcome with emotion, but it hadn't happened to her since she was a child. She managed to get it under control, bringing herself back so that she was fully visible, and she didn't miss the look of relief on Natasha's face.

The severe loathing she felt was still there, making her hands curl into fists on her lap. One thought was on a loop in her brain, and it stoked the fire of her rage.

_They took everything from me. They took everything from me. They took everything from me._

Natasha was still waiting patiently, watching as Nineteen got herself back under control. Though she couldn't banish the anger completely, she was able to reel it in enough to speak.

"I want to burn them to the ground."

The words came out deceptively calm despite the turmoil she was feeling, but Natasha smiled. It was the most genuine expression Nineteen had seen on the other woman's face.

"We can help you do that." Natasha paused, pushing the plate with the sandwich on it toward Nineteen. "But first, you eat."

Nineteen frowned. On the one hand, she still didn't trust these people, but on the other, she _really _wanted food.

"What?" Natasha asked, a note of teasing to her tone. "Don't like turkey?"

"I like turkey," Nineteen deadpanned. "I don't like being poisoned though."

Natasha picked up the sandwich and took a big bite, chewing and swallowing before holding out the remnants. Nineteen took it but still hesitated.

"You're no help to me if you're unconscious," Natasha pointed out.

Without any further argument, Nineteen demolished the sandwich in seconds, barely chewing. Once she was done, she finished the whole bottle of water as well. Natasha watched with a raised eyebrow but didn't comment on her record-breaking consumption.

Nineteen wiped the back of her mouth on her hand and regarded Natasha ambivalently. "I can tell you what I know, but I can't guarantee that it will do you any good. All that I can offer are my own experiences. I don't know much else."

Natasha didn't reveal what exactly she thought of that. All she did was cross her arms and say, "Start at the beginning."

And that's exactly what Nineteen did.

**1996**

They were running again. Her father said they had to, that it was the only way to keep them safe, but she didn't want to keep doing this.

Nine-year-old Melodie wasn't really attached to their most recent house or the town it was located in. She hadn't been attached to any of the many houses across the French countryside that her father had flitted them around to since she was two. She could vaguely remember the first house, the only one that had felt like home.

But that one had burned with her mother inside of it, and nothing had been the same since.

While her father packed their bags, taking only the bare essentials and leaving the rest, Melodie sat on the couch and stayed quiet. She knew that the reason they always moved was because of her, because of what she could do. Her father said that it meant that people would want to take her, to hurt her, and so they kept moving to keep people off their trail.

But this time, this impending move, was definitely her fault. Her guilt kept her silent, not wanting to stress out her father any more than he already was.

Melodie had never been good at making friends. When she was younger and still bothered to try, they seemed to always sense that she wasn't quite right. They would rebuff any attempts she made to reach out to them. Eventually she'd given up and did her best to fade into the background. It was something she was good at even without her power.

But there was typically always at least one who saw her as an easy target. The boy who bullied her at her most recent school had been one of the more relentless ones and had targeted her from the moment she stepped into the classroom. Then had come the day where a frog had landed on the table next to her during recess, and she had shrieked and run from it. Spotting a weakness, the boy had pounced.

The day before, when he had spotted a frog on the playground, he'd captured it with the sole intent of torturing her with it. He'd chased her round and round until he cornered her against the wall of the school. He'd been reaching forward to put the frog in her hair when she'd started to flicker.

At first he stared in amazement, then he'd yelled for everyone to come and look at her, at the freak who could turn invisible.

Her entire year had seen it. Though no adults had witnessed her lapse in control, the other children told on her like she'd been doing something wrong. Perhaps they might have dismissed it as a game or a child's imagination, but Melodie's father wasn't taking the chance.

When a knock sounded at the door, Melodie nearly jumped out of her skin. Her father, who had been packing up some food in the kitchen froze, eyes locked on the front door. Whoever was there knocked again, and Melodie's father motioned for her to hide.

She ran to the coat closet but didn't close the door all the way so that she had a sliver through which she could watch what happened. Her father ran his hand through his mostly gray hair before he opened the door. The door itself blocked Melodie's view of the visitor, but she could see the forced pleasant look on her father's face as he greeted them in his native French.

"Hello, gentlemen. Can I help you with something?"

The voice of the man who replied was smooth and slightly hinted at a German accent. "Good afternoon, sir. My name is Smith. I was hoping I might be able to speak to you about your daughter."

Her father's expression slipped slightly. "My daughter? Whatever for?"

"Would it be all right if we came inside? It might be better if we spoke in private."

Her father hesitated, but his attempt at acting normal would fail if he refused and he didn't really have any casual reason not to allow them inside. He took a small step to the side, and three men walked into the house.

Melodie eyed the visitors warily from her hiding spot. Two were dressed identically in black suits with white shirts and black ties. One was fairly short with a shiny bald head and a pushed in nose that made him look like a bulldog. The other was so muscular he looked like he could barely fit into his clothes, and his long brown hair was braided down his back. When they moved she could see the outline of something strapped to their belts through their jackets.

The third man, however, had a presence that simply demanded attention, pushing the other two into the background with ease. He was tall and slim with his hair shaved nearly down to the scalp, leaving only a thin layer of blonde fuzz behind. He was dressed all in black, including a long coat that fell to his knees. He was also wearing a monocle on his right eye.

He surveyed the room like he was looking for something before turning back to her father. "Do you speak English? I'm afraid my French doesn't go much beyond what you just heard."

"Yes," he replied, his accent thick around the language he didn't speak very often. "Would you like a drink? We have water, tea…"

The man with the monocle, the one who'd identified himself as Smith, sat down in the tiny living room like he owned the place, crossing his legs and relaxing against the back of the sofa. His two friends stood behind him silently. "No, thank you. As I said, I came here for one reason."

Her father stood opposite Smith, nothing but a rickety coffee table between them. He was beginning to look nervous. "Yes, but I do not know what you could possibly need with her. She is a good student, quiet, and she never gets in trouble."

"An associate of ours was recently walking by a local school when he spotted quite the commotion happening. It seemed as if a fight might have been going on, and then one of the fighters…disappeared." Smith cocked his head, staring unblinkingly at the man across from him. "Would you happen to know anything about that?"

Melodie could see the sweat on her father's forehead. "No, sir. As I said, my Melodie does not get in trouble. She would not have been fighting."

"That presents an issue. You see, I happen to _know_ that you are aware of the incident. I also know that your daughter is the child in question. And as I've also noticed those." Smith paused to nod his head toward the packed suitcases standing by the door. "Are you going on a trip? How odd that you would choose now, right after such a remarkable incident at your daughter's school."

Smith smiled as Melodie's father spluttered about a planned visit to see family in Belgium, though the lie was painfully obvious. Melodie began to shake, and tears welled in her eyes. She'd seen her father afraid many times since her powers first manifested, but this was beyond that. This was the terror of a man who was backed into a corner and didn't know how to keep up his charade.

"Please, make no mistake," Smith continued, "I am not here to frighten or threaten you. On the contrary, I've come to extend an offer."

"An offer of what?"

"I work for an international organization that identifies children with potential." Smith reached into his coat and pulled out a business card to hand to her father. "My team identifies children with talents that…go beyond what one might consider a typical prodigy."

Melodie's father was staring at the business card with narrowed eyes. "And what exactly do you do with these children when you find them, Mr. Smith?"

"We foster their talents. We prepare them to make the most of their gifts. Our goal is to make sure these children utilize what makes them special in the hopes that they can eventually become leaders. Maybe one day they can even make the world a better place."

"So you want to…help her?"

Smith smiled again. "Yes, sir. That is exactly what we want. I am assuming your daughter's gift revealed itself at a young age, and you have been moving often to keep it a secret. Yours would not be the first case we've encountered that follows this pattern. We understand how hard it must be, to run so much for so long. We're offering an alternative."

Melodie's father was listening intently, and she could see on his face that he was beginning to waver. She knew how difficult it must have been for him to keep them going all these years. They'd never stopped since her mother's death, and she wondered now if he'd even had time to properly grieve her. The stress of the life they lived was written on him in premature wrinkles and thinning gray hair. He was haggard, tired, and Melodie felt more guilt than she usually did as she watched him try to continue protecting her despite it all.

Smith sensed the other man's weariness and dug in deeper. "We are offering her protection, training, and an education more thorough than most of the world's top universities can boast."

"What do you want in exchange? I…do not have a lot of money."

Smith laughed and shook his head. "Oh, we are not asking for money. Our reward will be watching her one day bring this world into an era of peace and prosperity."

Melodie may have been a child and not quite understood the full gravity of what Smith was saying, but she could gather enough based on the expression on her father's face. His eyes were shining, and for the first time in a very long time, she could see that he was hopeful.

Smith too saw the look in his eyes, and he must have known that he was winning the man over even if he hadn't yet agreed. "You can have as much time here as you need to settle your affairs. We can take her with us today and get her settled into your new quarters at our facility, and you may join us as soon as you are ready."

"Where is this facility?"

"I'm afraid that's classified. As you are well aware, there are a lot of people who would take advantage of our pupils should they get the chance. For their protection, we do our best to keep as much about our operation confidential as possible. I will leave my associate Jones," he nodded at the man with the long hair, "here with you, and he will bring you to us at your convenience. The rest will be explained when you reach us."

The last vestiges of resistance in Melodie's father died. He had been offered something he didn't even know was within the realm of possibility, and he'd spent so long foreseeing a life of hardship for his only child that spotting light on the horizon was too much to pass up. He couldn't deny her an opportunity to learn, to understand what she was, and she would be surrounded by those like her as she studied. It was more than he could have asked her.

"Melodie," he called, eyes meeting hers through the crack in the closet door, "come out now, my darling. There is someone I would like you to meet."

Melodie put a trembling hand on the closet door and pushed it open. When she stepped into the living room, Smith turned to her with a kind smile. She was frightened at the idea of going with these men and leaving her father behind, but she trusted that he knew what was best for her and that they wouldn't be separated long. After all, Smith had said that he could follow them as soon as he was finished here. That wouldn't take long at all. And she had no reason to disbelieve the man with the monocle at his word.

She had no way of knowing then just how that moment would shape the rest of her life. It wouldn't be much further in the future that "Smith" taught Melodie exactly what could happen when one's trust was misplaced.

* * *

A/N: Hello again! Just have a few quick things to say here at the end.

I forgot to mention last time that the title for this story is from the song "So Far" By Ólafur Arnalds, which I feel perfectly fits our protagonist (and is also a devastatingly beautiful song). I have also made a soundtrack playlist on YouTube of songs that I feel go with the story or helped inspire it in some way, and each chapter title comes from a line in one of those songs. Last chapter's title comes from "The Lonely" by Christina Perri, and this one is from "Paralyzed" by NF. I'm not really sure how links are working on this website anymore, but I put a link for the playlist in my bio for anyone who's interested! If it doesn't work, please let me know and I'll try to figure out how to fix it.

I'd also like to thank everyone for the reviews, follows and favorites! It means so much that you guys are enjoying this!

Lastly, who has seen Endgame?! I honestly think this one might be favorite now. I'm going to see it again on Friday, haha. I'd love to hear in the reviews what you guys thought, but please try not to spoil anything for those who haven't been able to see it yet!

Thanks for reading!


	3. We Bend Before We Break

**2007**

Once Nineteen began talking, it became hard to stop. So many of her formative years had been spent in silence that it seemed like she had a backlog of words she needed to get out as fast as possible now that someone was listening.

Weeks went by during which a new routine was fleshed out. Nineteen would wake up, have a small breakfast, feed information to Natasha until around noon, eat lunch, and then continue her story until supper. After her last meal of the day, she would be left to her own devices until she eventually fell asleep. Due to her sticking faithfully to the restrictions placed upon her, Natasha was able to convince whoever was in charge to give her some leeway. A cot was brought in for her to sleep on, and she was no longer kept chained to any furniture. The latter privilege was only allowed after a heat sensor was installed on the surveillance cameras so they would know where she was if she was invisible. Nineteen didn't mind, as she didn't have any plans on using her gift. She was starting to think that she was right where she wanted to be.

Despite the fact that she was convinced that most of what she knew was useless, Nineteen didn't spare any detail in her narrative. Her memory was a bit foggy on the earlier parts, but she did her best. Natasha listened and only occasionally asked for clarification. She never wrote down any of what Nineteen said, so she assumed that the recipient of the intel, whoever they may be, was watching via the security footage. Natasha ended up serving less as an interrogator than an eyeline for Nineteen to use to ignore the cameras while her monologue went on.

After her retelling of the day she was taken from her father in France, Natasha had asked only two questions. Whether or not she remembered her last name (she didn't) and if she knew what year she was born (also uncertain). Nineteen assumed that meant they were working on finding out her real identity, but she wasn't all that upset about not being able to help them with that. Some things, she was sure, were better off remaining buried. She'd never seen her father again after she left home that fateful day, and she was more frightened than anything of finding out what happened to him. Somehow the idea of him being alive and being dead was equally disturbing.

Nineteen walked Natasha through her early days with her captors. The man with the monocle had performed experiments on her, and she'd come to understand that they were trying to use her to find a way to replicate her gift in others. That year of captivity had been the hardest, as "Smith" had made the doctors push her body and mind to the limit to try and find out what made her possible. Natasha had attempted looking him up, but he'd given a fake name, which didn't surprise either of the women in the least. Nineteen was assured that they would keep looking, and she hoped that was true. He was certainly a man she'd love to encounter again now that she was more capable of defending herself.

After a year of misery and Smith's repeated failures, her custody had changed hands to Miller, who had begun teaching her to be used as a spy rather than a lab rat. He oversaw her training in combat, stealth, foreign languages, weaponry, and strategy. Most importantly, she had been taught how to perfectly harness her gift. It had been slow going for many years, as she often couldn't hold onto the invisibility if she was under duress. And when she failed, Miller was in charge of her punishments. Most of those she met at the hands of a taser baton that he kept strapped to his hip at all times. Nineteen had observed the way Natasha had rearranged her face into indifference while she spoke of her training and Miller, and she wondered just how similar their experiences might have been.

During all of this, Nineteen spoke with complete candor. She didn't leave out details or rewrite situations to make herself look or feel better. It would have been all too easy to, but she found that there was something cathartic in the honesty. Unloading all the hardship onto someone else made dealing with it herself a fraction easier.

But then came the day where Nineteen reached a point in her story that made all the words stick in her throat. A slight bubble of panic built in her chest. She'd known it was going to come up, had spent sleepless hours dwelling on it without ever deciding what she would do, and now the moment was here and she still didn't know.

Natasha was staring at her. She knew she only had seconds to decide how to handle it before the other woman sensed that something was up. So she started to talk, dancing around the real significance of the story in order to buy herself some time.

"Miller kept me in training for a long time, around six years, I think. He was under a lot of pressure to put me in the field sooner, but he didn't. I believe he was…worried I might get myself killed on my first mission and then he would be blamed. He knew that I was a highly valued asset, and he didn't want to lose me since it would mean demotion of his own status within the organization. That's what happened to the man with the monocle, or so I overheard."

Natasha nodded. "Makes sense. You didn't pop up on our radar until about a year ago."

Nineteen nodded, swallowing the anxious lump in her throat. "Yes. My first field exercise would have been around then."

"Was that Zagreb?"

"Yes."

"You were almost caught that night, weren't you? There was a murder reported at the scene."

Nineteen swallowed again. She gripped her knees so she wouldn't start picking at her nails. "Yes."

"Tell me what happened."

**2006**

Nineteen sat perfectly still and attentive while Miller told her the details of her mission. He had a projector going to show her images of exactly what she needed to look for, and she focused on those most of all.

Oak desk with high-back leather chair. Top right drawer, lock she'd need to pick. Manila envelope with 2 USB drives.

She didn't know exactly whose house it was she was breaking into. They must have been important because the mansion was enormous. Now, however, it sat empty except for a few staff members and security detail, none of whom would ever know she was even there. The owner would go to sleep at night wherever he was in the world not knowing that back at his home, a thief was absconding with his life's work.

Nineteen also didn't know what she was stealing, but whatever it was, it made Miller nearly happy to think about. And he was never happy. That lead her to believe that whatever it was, it could probably hurt a lot of people.

The thought didn't really bother Nineteen. She was focused on the task at hand, and the thought of consequences wasn't even a blip on her radar.

"You need to be quick," Miller was telling her sternly. "The security guard who patrols the upper floor will pass by the office, and he won't come by again for approximately fifteen minutes. That's how much time you'll have to get in and out."

Nineteen nodded, but Miller stared down his large, hooked nose at her until she said, "Yes, sir."

He turned the projector off then, flipping back on the harsh overhead lights. "You'll have a team to fly you there and back, and the Winter Soldier will be your…escort until we're confident that you can handle these assignments on your own."

Nineteen had never heard of the Winter Soldier before, but the way Miller's lip quirked slightly in disgust suggested that he didn't like the man. She wondered who was forcing his hand on the matter.

"You leave tomorrow evening at 1700," Miller continued.

Nineteen drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly through her nose. It was one of the tactics she'd been taught to calm herself when her gift became unruly, but after a time, it had become more of a habit whenever she was feeling any emotion she didn't want to. It helped her concentrate and made it easier for her to compartmentalize and shove down the uninvited feelings. Her nerves were still there, but she was able to mask them so well she could almost convince herself that her knees weren't shaking. She knew she needed to get used to this feeling. Now that the missions were starting, there wouldn't be an end to them.

Miller took her back to her room and attached the familiar shackle at her ankle. It was bolted to a chain in the middle of the floor and gave Nineteen enough room to move about the room freely, but it also left an easy way for someone to figure out where she was if she were invisible. They used it as a security measure, and she was so used to it by then that she rarely noticed it. However, she still bore the scars from the beginning, when the metal had rubbed her skin raw until she bled and cried and begged fruitlessly for someone to take it off.

She slept poorly, though that was nothing new. She dreamt that she'd already gone on the mission and failed, and her mind imagined Miller's subsequent punishment in alarming detail. She woke up sweating and gasping, and after that, she spent the rest of the night sitting awake in her bed with her knees pulled up to her chest.

Guards came to retrieve her an hour before wheels up, and she was brought to a room she'd never seen before so that she could acquire gear. They dressed her in all black, form-fitting spandex to improve her mobility. Nineteen had never worn such tight clothes before and had to stop herself from pulling at the fabric to so it wouldn't cling to her body.

Two pistols were hooked to either side of her belt, and four knives were stashed in various places on her person. A tool to help her pick locks was hung around her neck on a ball chain and stashed in the bodice of her shirt, and she was handed a pair of black gloves to be put on later, which she stuffed in the front of her belt until she needed them.

It wasn't the most dignified display, considering a whole group of men watched her being stripped and dressed, but Nineteen had lost most of her modesty when she was Smith's ward. Back then she would often have to stand completely naked in a room full of old men in lab coats while they poked and prodded her for hours. Somehow this seemed like the lesser of the evils.

Miller watched her being outfitted critically, and it wasn't hard for Nineteen to figure out just how little faith he had in her ability to complete the mission. She almost didn't blame him. The other men gearing up in the room dwarfed her in both height and weight, and in their shadow, she felt more like a child than she had when she _was_ a child. But that was the point, wasn't it? She was supposed to be easy to miss; smaller, quieter, and stealthier. Nineteen was exactly what she was supposed to be.

At least that's what she kept telling herself.

The sole door in the room opened, and several guards filed in. She assumed this must be the arrival of the Winter Soldier, judging by the sour way Miller took in their presence.

Last to enter were two men, one in a Russian military uniform who eyed her in a very unimpressed way and when she finally got a look at the other, she nearly collapsed.

It had been eight years, and she had never forgotten him. Though the metal arm was hidden beneath long sleeves and a glove, she didn't need to see it to identify him. It was hard not to remember the face of the only person who'd ever tried to help you when your whole life was one traumatic moment after another. Sometimes she still saw him in her dreams, fending off attackers and even sometimes saving her from Miller's wrath. Until that moment, she hadn't been sure whether or not he was still alive, and she'd been certain that if he was, he wouldn't look the same. But he was alive and he did look the same, and now he was standing only feet from her. And apparently, he was the Winter Soldier.

Their eyes met, and Nineteen held her breath, waiting for the moment where recognition registered on his face. However, he barely looked at her for more than a second before he moved on to a weapon rack and began putting an absurd amount of grenades in a backpack.

The realization that he didn't remember her stung worse than Miller's baton. Nineteen was frustrated at herself for feeling disappointed. Of course it made sense that he didn't remember. It was years ago, and she wasn't a child anymore. She'd also been drenched in her own blood, she remembered with a wince.

He was the last in the room to finish getting ready. Despite the fact that this was supposed to be a simple mission that didn't require any killing, the Soldier outfitted himself like he was preparing to singlehandedly take down an entire army. His handler barked at him in Russian, a language Nineteen wasn't much more than conversational in, but she guessed that he was being given a rundown on their mission. He answered in sentences so simple even she could understand them with her limited understanding of the language. She tried to be discreet as she watched, eventually losing count of how many things he had on him that could kill someone. It might have seemed excessive if everyone else didn't seem uncomfortable or downright afraid in his presence. Nineteen remembered the smooth, almost relaxed way she'd watched him snap a man's neck that day in the sparring room, and their behavior made a little more sense.

Miller lead their procession outside to a launchpad where a jet was waiting for them. The Soldier's handler didn't follow them out, but he didn't seem to need any more direction, as he strode onto the jet without a backward glance. Miller followed Nineteen all the way to her seat, and while the other men buckled themselves into their seats, Miller buckled Nineteen in, yanking roughly on the straps until they were tight enough to border on painful. The way the two men across from her exchanged smirks made Nineteen feel foolish, and she wished she could have been allowed to do it herself.

Once Miller was done, he stared down at her harshly enough that her embarrassment was instantly replaced with fear, but she tried not to show it outwardly just in case the rest of the team was still watching.

"Do _not _fail," Miller said. The words were simple, but the threat behind them made her hands shake as he turned to leave.

As the pilots prepared to take off, the Soldier reappeared from the cockpit and took the open seat to Nineteen's right. He didn't use the seat belts and stared blankly straight ahead. The man in the seat across from him seemed to be trying very hard not to make eye contact.

The jet was in the air within minutes, and Nineteen's stomach clenched. Before coming to the base, she'd never been on a plane, and the fear she now associated with flying made it a nauseating experience every time. She distracted herself by glancing over the passengers of the jet. Besides herself and the Winter Soldier, there were four guards. None of them were there to participate in the mission, so she could only assume they were present in case she failed and someone needed to clean up a mess. In fact, the Soldier was only there to make sure she didn't get herself killed, which meant that everyone else was just coming along to ensure she didn't ruin everything. She couldn't help but notice that also meant that she'd have a decent-sized audience if she _did_ screw up.

Once they reached a high enough altitude, everyone else unbuckled and began moving about the cabin. Nineteen undid her seat belt to relieve the discomfort but didn't move. She glanced at the Soldier and noticed that he was watching the others prepare. The way he looked at them was unsettling. It was the void stare of a predator who didn't want you to know when he was going to pounce. The icy color of his eyes didn't help. She didn't know if she'd ever seen a blue like that anywhere, and the unfamiliarity of it invited her to stare longer, to decide exactly how to find a way to describe the shade.

When he suddenly turned those scary blue eyes on her, Nineteen hastily looked away, face burning. The flight was only supposed to be an hour long, but she sensed it was going to feel much longer.

* * *

When they began their descent in Croatia, Nineteen began to feel the buzz of nerves. Her hands trembled slightly and her thoughts began to race as she considered what was ahead. She was so lost in thought that when one of the guards thrust a huge gun into her hands, she nearly dropped it. She managed to keep a tenuous grip on the barrel and grab the magazine and ammo that were shoved into her hands next.

"Hopefully you can load a gun for yourself even if you haven't got the hang of seat belts yet," the woman said derisively over her shoulder as she went back to her seat.

Nineteen flushed, not only because of the comment but also because she wasn't as familiar with rifles as she was with pistols and honestly didn't know whether or not she knew enough to figure it out. She set the gun itself on the floor in front of her feet and went about trying to load the magazine. The shaking in her hands became more pronounced when she was trying to use them, and she kept dropping everything she was holding.

After her fourth time picking spilled cartridges up off the ground, everything was snatched from her hands very suddenly. She jumped in surprise, and then watched in awe as the Soldier deftly finished loading the magazine, jammed the magazine into the rifle, and then dropped the loaded gun back into her lap.

The whole interaction only lasted seconds, and once it was over, he went back to staring straight ahead. Nineteen knew she should thank him, but words failed her. Instead, her eyes darted over to the others to make sure they hadn't witnessed her second shame of the evening.

Their jet landed not long after that in a field several kilometers away from the target. The Soldier stood up and shouldered his pack before fixing a mask to his face that concealed everything from the nose down. Somehow he looked even more terrifying than before.

Nineteen put on her gloves and slung the rifle strap across her body so the gun rested against her back. It would be the only thing she was going to carry, which she was glad of. Still, the weight of it felt awkward and wrong, and she privately thought to herself that if she ended up needing to shoot someone, she would probably reach for the pistols at her belt first.

A humvee was waiting for them concealed in underbrush. Two of their guards rode in the front while Nineteen and the Soldier had to join the remaining two on the floor in the back. They drove as silently as possible through the forest that surrounded the mansion. In order to limit their chances of getting spotted, they couldn't turn on the headlights, but thankfully the sun hadn't set all the way yet, so there was still enough sunlight to see by. It was a warm evening, humid with the threat of a storm. Nineteen stared at her boots and used her breathing exercises to keep her heartbeat down. The last thing she needed right now was for her gift to stop working on her.

They stopped a kilometer or so outside of the property, and when they all hopped out, one of the men with them handed Nineteen and the Soldier ear comms. The pair continued alone on foot from there while the others set up a laptop that would be able to hack into the mansion's security cameras so they could give callouts while the Soldier and Nineteen were inside. When they reached the edge of the woods lining the property, they halted. Their was a wide open expanse of grass between them and the enormous house with nowhere to take cover.

The Soldier put his hand to his comm. "We're at the property line."

It was the first time she'd ever heard him speak English, and his accent was the same as Miller's, American. The inflection was just as perfect as when he spoke Russian, and Nineteen wondered which one was his actual native tongue. Maybe neither if he was that good at adopting a language that wasn't his. He could be French like her for all she knew.

The comm crackled in her ear as one of the men waiting in the truck responded. "Understood. Go gray, and proceed to the east door."

"Going gray" was the signal designated for Nineteen to use her gift. The phrase had a peculiar effect on her. She'd expected it to make her anxious the way it did in training, always unsure whether or not she was going to be able to hold her invisibility. This time, however, it seemed do the opposite, working to calm her and make it easier to focus. Maybe it was the familiarity of the situation after all the training exercises or simply adrenaline taking over, but her mind went perfectly blank as she reached out and put a hand on the Soldier's right shoulder.

His eyes met her sharply, but he didn't shake her off. She got the very distinct impression that he didn't want her touching him. Obviously no one had felt the need to tell him that she would need to hold onto him in order for the plan to work.

"Sorry," she said, pulling her hand back slightly, "but I have to, or you'll be seen."

The Soldier's stare was unreadable as he looked back and forth between her eyes before giving a tiny nod. She placed her hand back on his flesh shoulder and watched as they both began to fade away. Within a moment they were both completely invisible, and she gave his shoulder a small squeeze to signal that it was time to go.

Without a word, they began their trek across the property. The Soldier's taller stature made Nineteen have to jog to keep up with him, but she didn't mind. It just meant they were going to get back under cover faster. Even though no one could see them, being out in the open like that gave her an uncomfortable exposed feeling.

Under her hand, Nineteen could feel the Soldier's muscles moving as he scanned the terrain with his rifle, keeping an eye out for any potential threats. When an owl hooted in the distance, she felt him jerk sharply toward the noise and had to fight not to tighten her grip on him in case that startled him too.

Right as they reached the door on the east side of the mansion, their comms buzzed again. "Security just passed the office. Your fifteen minutes start now."

The Soldier set to work getting them in. Nineteen couldn't see what he was doing, but it almost sounded like he was using a very quiet drill and she could see something grinding down the lock and deadbolt on the door. During their debrief, Miller had spent most of the time telling Nineteen about what to do once she was in the room with the oak desk. She hadn't even thought about asking how to actually get into the house, but now she realized that had been because that seemed to be more of the Soldier's task than hers. Unsure of what to do with herself while she waited, Nineteen turned as much as she could with her hand still on his shoulder and kept an eye out on the land behind them to make sure they were still clear.

The door finally popped open enough to reveal a chain lock on the inside. The Soldier used something to snap it and then lead her inside, quietly shutting the door behind them.

They appeared to be in a kitchen, but Nineteen didn't get much of a look at it. The Soldier was apparently very conscious of their time frame, and he lead her through the house as fast as he could while also checking around every corner and making sure they were still keeping silent. She was surprised a man of his size could be so quiet, but his footsteps made absolutely no noise on the hardwood beneath them.

A woman in a maid's uniform rounded the corner ahead of them, and they both froze. She breezed on by, barely an inch from Nineteen's left shoulder, and the moment she was out of sight again, the Soldier got them moving. When they reached the staircase to the second level, their ten-minute warning sounded in their comms.

When they reached the second story, they were in a long hallway. They took a left and stopped at the second door to the right. The Soldier opened it and lead Nineteen inside before shutting it behind them. She saw the leather chair behind the oak desk and let go of the Soldier's shoulder, knowing they'd reached the part of the mission that was her responsibility. They both became visible immediately, and she hurried to the desk while he took up his place next to the door to stand watch.

Nineteen went around to the opposite side of the desk and sat in the leather chair, rolling it so she was directly in front of the right drawer. She pulled the chain free from her shirt and started to use the tool at the end to work the drawer open. She was conscious of the time ticking down at the back of her mind, but much to her own surprise, she wasn't all that anxious. The calm was forced, something she had to do in order to be able to use her gift, but in the moment, it was easy to pretend that it was real and the whole scenario wasn't extensively nerve-wracking.

The drawer's lock finally clicked, and she pulled it open. Sitting on top was exactly what she was looking for. She pulled out the envelope and flipped it open. The drives were there, and Nineteen didn't even notice the triumphant grin that split her face. She took them and popped open a little pouch on her belt. Inside were two dummy drives identical to the ones she was holding. She wasn't sure exactly what they would do when they were plugged in, but she knew that someone's day was going to be ruined. That was why Miller had stressed the need to cover their tracks, so that the time before they realized there was a break in was enough to make the person who owned the mansion use the drives thinking they were his own. The locks the Soldier broke on the door would create a problem, but Nineteen was working out a plan for that already.

"Five minutes," someone said into the comms. Nineteen hastily put the dummy drives into the folder and put the stolen ones safely into the pouch at her belt. She used the lockpick to lock the drawer again and turned her eyes to the Soldier. He'd been watching her silently, rifle still held at the ready, and she nodded to him that she was ready. When she approached him, he turned his back to her, waiting for her to put her hand on his shoulder and make them both invisible again. However, it was at that moment that things started to go wrong.

The door to the office opened, but it only made it halfway since Nineteen was standing right behind it. She was hit directly in the face, and the impact was mostly felt in her nose. She stumbled to the ground, clutching her face.

An older man with balding black hair and a mustache peeked his head into the room, and his eyes widened in surprise when he saw her there. Unfortunately, he didn't see the Soldier standing just on the other side of the door, and when the man opened his mouth and sucked in a breath to yell, his last few wisps of hair were grabbed and he was yanked the rest of the way into the office.

The Soldier pulled the man against his body with blinding speed and held him in a tight chokehold, simultaneously using his foot to shut the door again. Within moments the man's face was purple and his eyes were bulging out of his head. He stopped struggling and went unconscious soon after, but the Soldier didn't let go. He kept his airway cut off until the man died in his arms, and Nineteen watched it all in a kind of detached shock.

When the Soldier finally released him, the man's body slumped to the floor. Nineteen noted that he was wearing a jumpsuit and carrying a tool bag. The name tag on his chest declared that he was Lou from maintenance. He must have been sent up to fix something. Whoever the informant was who'd given them the information to get in must not have known he would be coming tonight. Nineteen felt a sharp relief at the notion that they hadn't actually been caught yet, and then she felt guilt when she realized that a man's death was giving her solace instead of grief.

The Soldier knelt down in front of her, halting the crazed path her thoughts were heading down. He batted her own hand away from her face and gripped her chin, tilting her head at different angles as he looked her over. For a moment, Nineteen was completely confused about what he was doing until she realized he was making sure she wasn't injured. That same warm feeling he'd inspired in her when she was a child flared up in her chest.

She gave him a small nod to let him know she was fine, and he released her face only to grab her forearm and pull her to her feet. It happened so fast Nineteen wobbled slightly once she was upright, but he had already let go and was standing over Lou's body. Without a single indication of effort, the Soldier hefted the dead man over one shoulder. The tool bag he still wore rattled, which Nineteen knew might cause a bit of a problem, but they were definitely running short on time and there was nothing to do about it.

Again, the Soldier presented his back to Nineteen, and this time she was able to grip his shoulder and make them both disappear. They left the room, moving slow enough to keep quiet but fast enough to make up for the time they'd lost. Just as they reached the stairs, Nineteen noticed the security guard coming around the corner to patrol the upstairs hallway. She breathed a silent sigh of relief knowing that they'd made it with just enough time to spare.

When they reached the hallway that the kitchen - and subsequently, their exit - occupied, the Soldier stopped and tapped her hand twice. Unsure what he wanted, she just looked around, thinking someone might have been nearby. After a moment, he reached back and pried her hand off him and became immediately visible.

Nineteen's eyes flickered around in a panic as she too reappeared. This definitely wasn't part of the plan.

"What are you doing?!" she hissed at him.

The Soldier ignored her and bent over, tossing the body to the floor with a quiet thud and a rattle from the tool bag. He arranged Lou on his back and pulled the strap of the bag up higher around his neck, and it dawned on Nineteen that he was trying to make it look like someone had strangled the man with his own bag. While he did that, Nineteen gazed around for something to use to put her own plan into place.

In an alcove in the hallway, there was a rather large vase with two ornately carved handles, painted with a swirling floral pattern. Nineteen lifted it, and it was surprisingly heavy. She hoped that meant it was expensive as she tucked it under her arm.

The Soldier turned to her again. He eyed the vase suspiciously but didn't question or protest as he presented his shoulder to her again. Once they had both disappeared, they fled the house and made for the property line.

Nineteen released the Soldier when they were safely back in the woods, and he informed the others through the comms that they were en route. It had grown darker during their time indoors, and all they had to see by was the low light of the moon. The pair walked back toward the truck without speaking until Nineteen paused to set the vase down. The Soldier watched as she grabbed a sizeable rock and began slamming it against the vase, breaking it into pieces. Once it was nothing but a bunch of shards, she kicked some underbrush over it to hide the evidence.

Nineteen met the Soldier's eyes, and he quirked an eyebrow at her in silent askance. She tossed the rock back onto the ground and dusted off her pants.

"They'll think it was a robbery now," she explained simply.

He didn't respond, just continued to look at her until she became a little unnerved. Unable to stand it any longer, she blurt out a question that had been on her tongue for hours.

"Don't you remember me?"

His expression didn't change at all. Nineteen wondered if he'd even heard her speak, or maybe he just didn't speak French. She wasn't even totally sure why she'd used French in the first place, but something about voicing the question in her first language made it feel safer...easier. When he remained silent, she felt unbearably awkward, and had to fight hard not to fidget under his gaze. When his hands moved to drop his enormous rifle back to his side, Nineteen actually flinched in surprise. But all he did was reach his hands up and remove the black mask from the lower half of his face. His eyebrows had knit together, and the expression of confusion made him look much less intimidating.

"Should I?" he asked.

The back of Nineteen's mind registered another perfect accent, leading to even more confusion about where exactly he was from, but most of all, his words brought her a strong sense of despondency.

"You…you saved me once. When I was a child, you tried to protect me when they were hurting me."

The Soldier's gaze fell to the ground. He still held the mask in his flesh hand, and his metal one was flexing beneath the black gloves. The whole arm began to whir and click as he moved, and Nineteen felt a slight prickle of fear, hoping she hadn't triggered some kind of kill response in it. The silence dragged on, and she was getting ready to tell him to forget she said anything when he finally spoke.

"They were kicking you." He said the words slowly, like the thoughts weren't fully formed when they made it to his lips. He'd reverted to English in his absentmindedness. "You were bleeding, and everyone was watching."

Nineteen's chest tightened, and she let a smile touch her face. She nodded enthusiastically, and his confusion suddenly gave way to pain and his hand came up to grasp his head. He staggered a little, and Nineteen rushed forward to steady him. The quick movement was a mistake, and before she even registered that he was touching her, he had her by the throat.

The Soldier's grip was tight but not tight enough to completely cut off her airway, but she knew just how easily that could change considering he was using the more dangerous of his two arms to hold her at bay. The thing that really got Nineteen's blood pumping was the absolutely murderous look he was giving her. Even in darkness the warning was clear. She held up both hands in surrender immediately.

"I'm sorry. I was just trying to help you."

Those words seemed to befuddle him more than any others she'd said so far. As uncertainty replaced the rage in his expression, his hand loosened until he was just lightly grasping her neck. Nineteen kept her hands up and didn't move in case he decided strangling her like Lou felt like a better idea.

"Do you know me?"

Nineteen struggled to make sense of his sudden question. "I told you. You protected me from the guards once."

"But before that? Do you know who I am?"

Nineteen didn't quite understand that question either, but the implication behind it and the desperation on his face made her heart ache for him. She let her hands fall slowly back to her sides and shook her head.

"That was the first day I saw you and the last until today."

His hand suddenly tightened on her throat just the slightest bit, but she could tell by the lost look in his eyes that it was more of a reflex as he reacted to her words. He was looking straight through her with an unfathomable expression on his face, and she wanted to reach out to him but knew that it wouldn't end well.

A voice came through their comms, requesting their location. Their little detour had taken too long, and Nineteen could detect the suspicion in the voice that confronted them. The Soldier had released her as if she'd burned him the moment that the voice sounded in their ears, and the spell was broken with it. He'd gone back to looking completely apathetic, and Nineteen had to turn away from him to respond due to the sudden lump in her throat.

"Got a little turned around. Should be there in five," she told the others.

When she rounded back toward the Soldier, his mask was on again, but he was still staring at her. She returned the gaze until he suddenly turned on his heel and began marching to their rendezvous point. She followed, but she couldn't get his words out of her head.

During the ride back to the jet and the subsequent flight home, Nineteen turned over his questions and reactions in her mind over and over until she finally came to the conclusion that there was something wrong with him, something that went beyond the obvious problems of missing an arm and being highly hostile. She concluded that the reason he didn't remember her had nothing to do with her aging and entirely to do with something else she couldn't figure out.

However, it wasn't long before she found out exactly what was going on.

When they returned to base, they were escorted to a room Nineteen had never been in before that contained some kind of device surrounding a chair. Miller was there, as was the Soldier's handler. The Soldier was lead to the chair and forced to sit down in it.

His handler had him give a mission report in English so everyone in the room could understand. Afterwards, the Soldier was strapped into the chair. Nineteen watched in confusion until his gaze suddenly locked on hers and didn't move. He looked terrified, and Nineteen felt dread curl around her belly.

The machine was turned on, and electricity crackled through it. Nineteen flinched at the sound, used to it meaning that she was going to be on the wrong end of Miller's wrath. A mouth guard was placed in between the Soldier's teeth, and then the arms of the machine began to lower around his head. Nineteen's mouth fell open in horror she couldn't hide, but she held the Soldier's gaze until the machine locked on either side of his face and began to electrocute him.

No one in the room seemed surprised or even put off by what was going on. The Soldier's screams echoed deafeningly around them, and Nineteen bit her cheek so hard to stop herself from doing something that blood began to well in her mouth. Every instinct she had begged her to act, but she stayed rooted the spot. Her entire body shook, but she didn't look away.

It felt like hours to Nineteen when the machine finally stopped, though it had only been a couple minutes. The machine pulled away from the Soldier's face and slid back into its original position. The Soldier was shaking like crazy and gasping for breath. Sweat made his long hair stick to his face. And when he looked up at everyone in the room, his eyes slid right over hers without stopping, and Nineteen knew immediately that she'd been right about his memory problems.

Hours later, when she was finally left alone in her room, Nineteen finally cried. It was something she hadn't done in years, but when she thought of the look in his eyes as he held her gaze from that chair and his screams of agony mixed with the violent sparks of electricity, it was impossible not to weep for him. They'd always been cruel to her, the people that ran this organization, but no matter how many bits of her they managed to chip off over the years, they never took everything all at once. But that's what they did to him. They took away everything he had, and judging by the audience's nonchalance, they did it often.

Nineteen made a promise then, both to herself and to the Soldier, that she was going to get them out. She didn't know how or when, but she wasn't going to let them die under the thumb of those monsters. No matter what it took, she was going to protect him from them.

All she had to do was figure out how to make him remember her long enough to trust her.

**2007**

When Nineteen finished detailing her first mission in Croatia, Natasha had several questions.

"Do you know who made the virus on the drives?"

Nineteen shook her head. "No. Miller gave them to me, but he definitely wasn't smart enough to make it."

Natasha bit her lip as she thought everything over. "And you don't know what their goal was in hitting that particular person?"

"No. I don't even know who it was."

"He was an arms dealer, very high profile. What you stole were plans for some very dangerous weaponry, and the decoys you left behind fried their entire server when they were plugged in so the only people who could access the plans would be the person who had the original drives."

"I gave them to Miller, and he passed them on to the higher-ups. I wish I could tell you where they went from there."

Natasha nodded slowly and then fixed her with a piercing look. "And you were alone when you entered the house?"

"Yes," Nineteen answered immediately. "The guards waited in the woods."

"Sorry if this is a little insulting, but how did you move a body on your own? You don't exactly seem like a weightlifter."

Nineteen smiled, making sure to keep her eyes neutral. "Guess I'm stronger than I look."

Natasha didn't look quite convinced, but she still let them move on. Though the Soldier was woven in and out of her story from that night on, Nineteen erased him from the versions she told Natasha. She'd promised herself she'd protect him, and that was exactly what she was going to do, whether that was from the people she was running from or the ones she was running toward. She knew that the things he'd done were much worse than what she'd been made to do, and she didn't want to risk Natasha's people putting a target on him.

So Nineteen kept her memories of the Soldier close to the chest and reminded herself that no matter what these people were willing to do to help her, she had a goal to work toward. He was still out there somewhere, still forced to do their bidding while they stole everything that he was afterward. And Nineteen had every intention of keeping her promise to him.

She just had to bide her time and hope that the information she was giving away wouldn't lead them to her former employers before she had a chance to get to them first.

* * *

A/N: This one got crazy long, sorry! I'm kind of uncertain about this chapter because now we're starting to get into the stuff with the Winter Soldier, so I'd really love some feedback. I'm working on the next chapter now, so I can definitely rework him if he's feeling too OOC. This fic will stick pretty rigidly to the plot of the movies for the most part, but I am taking some liberties with Bucky's time with HYDRA, so I'd love to know how that's coming across.

Once again, thank you so much everyone for the follows and favorites! It always makes my day when I see that notification pop up. :)

I have finals starting tomorrow, so the update might be a little later than usual if I can't find time to work on the next chapter. Until then, I hope everyone enjoyed this one, and good luck to anyone else suffering through exams this week!


	4. I Can Get It Back

**2007**

Natasha had spent years working for SHIELD, and during all that time, she'd been on countless missions that tested everything she knew about herself. There were some that had a lasting effect, but for the most part, she was able to push them out of her mind once they were over. It was a trait that not many possessed, and it certainly contributed to her skill as a spy.

But no matter how much she prided herself on her ability to compartmentalize, there was something about this particular mission that was affecting her in ways that she didn't know she could still be affected.

Nearly every day she would enter the tiny, sparsely-furnished room, sit in her uncomfortable chair, and listen to Nineteen talk about being being little more than a slave the way most people would talk about what they had for lunch. Even worse, the girl didn't even appear to be trying to go for a casual tone, it was just coming naturally. The things that she had done were truly just that normal to her every day life. She didn't know anything else, and it dredged up memories that Natasha had kept buried for a very long time, of a similar girl who thought she knew everything even though she was the most lost person in every room she entered.

Despite the undesirable circumstances that led her to the situation, Nineteen didn't seem bothered by her continued confinement, which made Natasha wonder just how often they kept her locked in a room. From the stories she told, presumably whenever she wasn't undergoing brutal training exercises or being sent all over the world to sow discontent, she was simply left to sit somewhere. They treated her exactly the way one would treat a tool. It was obvious just by the moniker they'd given her that she was subhuman to them, and it made Natasha want to shoot something. It had been quite awhile since she'd encountered a case quite as bad as Nineteen's, and it was bringing out parts of her she tried to pretend didn't exist.

Natasha was standing outside of the interrogation room, finishing up a cup of coffee before she went in to get what she could from Nineteen for the day, when the door behind her opened. She assumed it was one of the agents who usually came to sit in on her questionings, but when Nick Fury was suddenly standing beside her, she stood a little bit straighter.

To say that Natasha was surprised Nick was there would have been simultaneously a truth and a lie. Nick never showed up where or when you thought he would, so the notion that he surfaced when she least expected it just made sense somehow.

He didn't greet Natasha, only handed her an aged folder filled with documents. There was French on the front declaring that the folder was attached to a missing person's case, and when Natasha opened it, she did feel the first stirrings of legitimate surprise.

"Melodie Roux," Nick said, echoing the information she was scanning greedily. "Born January 10th, 1987 in Lyon, France."

Natasha quickly gathered a sum in her head, eyes shooting to Nick in surprise. "She's twenty years old."

Nick sat down in a nearby desk chair, staring up at her with his chin tilted down. "I thought she'd be younger too."

Natasha fell heavily into a chair across from Nick, hastily skimming as many of the documents as she could to gather what exactly was known about the girl she'd been mildly fixated on for weeks.

After her birth in Lyon, Melodie lived there with her parents until she was two when her mother died in a mysterious house fire. Only a few months after that, her father sent them drifting across the countryside from small town to small town. They never stayed anywhere for more than a few years, and some notes scribbled in margins by a detective investigating her case claimed that Melodie's father had worked odd jobs under the table and given fake names in order to get leases on houses and vehicles. All the clues hinted that the pair were running from something.

Everything matched exactly what Nineteen had told her about the beginnings of her life. Natasha felt a sense of smugness at the evidence of the girl's honesty, knowing she now had proof that her gut feeling was correct. However, she stopped basking in the glow of being right when she came to the evidence photos at the very end of the file.

Natasha sighed heavily, shutting the folder and fixing her eyes back on Nick. "They killed her father."

"Of course they did," Nick scoffed. "The police spent about six months looking for her, and then they gave up. She had no other family, no other connections. He was the one person who would have missed her when she was gone."

Natasha knew he was right. Thinking on it, it was what she would have done back in the day if someone had assigned her the mission. But now that she was on the other side, it was much harder to rationalize things like killing someone just because they were an inconvenience. She tossed the folder on the table between herself and Nick, not liking the weight of it in her hand any longer.

"She told me yesterday that all she really has left is the NSA mission where we finally caught up to her."

"Good because you're needed elsewhere. Barton's heading out for a mission in Budapest soon, and he could use you as backup."

"What about her?"

Nick fixed her with a look that made her feel chastised, much to her annoyance. "She'll be given a new identity and shipped off to a small town with a warning to keep her abilities under wraps for her own safety. We'll keep an ear to the ground in case anyone sniffs her out, and then we'll move her again if someone finds her. You know the drill."

Natasha stared at the table, trying not to look and feel like a child arguing with her father, even though that was how she felt most of the time with Nick Fury. "I'm not sure she's ready to be on her own."

"We'll keep an eye on her for a few months to make sure she's not doing anything stupid, but I'm not going to waste resources on her. We promised her protection, and she's getting a helluva lot of it. Beyond that, she's running solo."

"She doesn't just need protection though. The last time she lived in the real world, car phones were still all the rage."

Nick rolled his eyes. "So what, you want me to teach this girl a class on modern technology?"

"No, I just think-"

"Maybe you're thinking a little too much about this case." Nick folded his arms over his chest, staring at her with one penetrating eye. "I had a feeling you might be getting too close, but I didn't know just how bad it was."

Natasha abruptly stood from her chair, not liking the feeling of sitting down when someone was analyzing her. She crossed the room to grab the cup of coffee she'd been drinking earlier, taking a huge gulp of it even though it had grown cold and tasted bitter on her tongue.

"I know what you see in her," Nick continued, slightly less harsh when he spoke this time around, "and I know what you want me to do. But I could barely justify the offer of immunity to the board. There's no way in hell they'll go for it. We already have one former enemy spy on the docket, and there are still people that would love to see you go. If I try to say I want another one on my team, they might start to question exactly where my allegiance lies. I'm not putting my neck or yours on the line for her."

Natasha turned on her heel and leveled her eyes at him. "Then what about the Avengers Initiative?"

The small amount of indulgence on Nick's face vanished. "You gotta be pulling my goddamn leg now, Romanoff."

Natasha chose to ignore that and plow forward with her idea instead. "Her powers alone qualify her, but she also has experience and combat training. She fits the criteria that you were looking for and then some."

"And has about two dozen things I'm actively trying to avoid! We'll just ignore for the moment that she's obviously not a well-adjusted individual and focus on the rest. She's used to working alone. She has no motivation to help anyone but herself. Most importantly, we don't even know whether or not we can trust her!"

"You could have said the same for me! If we worked on her, that would all be different. I think she deserves the same chances I was given."

Nick stood from his chair with the exaggerated slowness of someone who was bone tired. He came to stand right next to Natasha, turning his good eye down to her.

"I'm sorry, but I can't take that chance twice."

Natasha knew that tone and recognized that he wasn't inviting any more protests. She could only look at him, hoping he could see all the retorts and frustration in her eyes that she couldn't let leave her tongue. He knew her well enough that she assumed it wasn't hard for him to guess exactly what was going on in her mind without even seeing the scathing expression on her face.

Nick turned to leave, and even though she knew she was pushing it, Natasha called out, "I want to do her relocation. I'll go to Budapest or wherever the hell else after, but I need to be the one to finish this."

Nick paused in the doorway, keeping his back to her. His hesitation only lasted a moment before he said, "Get her to a safe house, and make sure no one's on your trail. I'll send you the details tonight, and you can move her tomorrow. But the day after that, you're on a jet to Budapest."

"Understood."

* * *

Although Nineteen had been confined to her bedroom/interrogation room for over a month, it almost surprised her when the moment came where she had no more left to say. Natasha asked more questions than ever that day in an attempt to drain every last bit of information she might have, but after only speaking for a little over two hours, there was nothing left to say.

Natasha had seemed different since she walked in, perhaps even more subdued than usual, and she'd was carrying a bag that she'd set on the floor and hadn't acknowledged their entire time together.

"So what now?" Nineteen finally asked after several long moments of silence.

Natasha smoothed her hands over the black pants she was wearing, seeming like she didn't really want to answer the question. "You'll be moved to a secure location tomorrow."

"And then what?"

"Then you can start living your life, however you want."

Flummoxed, Nineteen just blinked at Natasha. However she wanted? She wasn't used to being given more than one option, let alone limitless ones. The concept was overwhelming. From the moment she had been taken by Smith, every moment of her life had been dictated for her, and after all the times she longed and even planned to run away, she was finally realizing that she never actually spared a thought for what came after the escape.

Natasha either didn't notice her internal crisis or was polite enough to pretend. She finally reached for the canvas bag at her feet, picking it up by the handles and tossing it to Nineteen. She caught it and looked inside to see that it had clothes in it.

"Figured you'd be sick of wearing those by now," Natasha said, gesturing to the admittedly dirty outfit she'd been wearing since she was captured. "They might be a little big, but you only have to wear them today."

"What for?" asked Nineteen as she pulled the clothes from the bag. It was a pair of navy blue sweatpants, a long-sleeved gray t-shirt, socks, and underwear.

"We're leaving. If anyone's found you here, it'll throw them off if we change locations twice, and it'll also give me time to notice if someone is following."

"When do we leave?"

"As soon as you're dressed." Natasha stood up then, heading toward the door. "I'll wait for you outside."

Nineteen began to get changed as soon as the door closed. She stripped all the way down, not even bothering to fake modesty even though she figured she was mostly likely being watched through the mirror. Back at the facility where she'd spent most of her life, she was often made to change in front of others, and she found out quickly that it was easier to just push away the shame rather than wallow in it. It had left her with a rather relaxed view on nudity.

The pants were definitely too big, and she had to pull the drawstring extremely tight to make them to stay up. The t-shirt was a little loose, but she preferred it that way. Since she didn't have other shoes, the worn combat boots went back on her feet.

As she was finishing lacing up the second one, Natasha returned flanked by two guards. They were the ones who typically took turns walking her to the bathroom, though they were outfitted more casually this time, but Nineteen still eyed them, wondering if she was going to need to be handcuffed to be allowed to leave the room.

Natasha nodded her head back toward the door when Nineteen made eye contact with her. "Let's go."

Nineteen followed the redhead out of the interrogation room, through the adjacent observatory room, and into the familiar hallway leading to the bathrooms. She was surprised this time to see that they hadn't evacuated the area like they usually did, and people were milling about as they passed. Most were dressed in business attire and so wrapped up in their work that they didn't bother to take notice of them. The ones that did eyed Nineteen curiously, and she stared back unabashedly. After over a month, she certainly wasn't going to let any of them start thinking she was intimidated now.

At the entrance to the building, there was an emblem on the wall. It looked like a stylized bird, and the letters above it spelled out SHIELD.

"You never told me you were SHIELD," Nineteen said to Natasha.

"You never asked."

Nineteen smirked a little at that. "Miller used to talk about you all like you were the scum of the Earth. What exactly is SHIELD?"

"We're an intelligence and counter-terrorism agency."

Nineteen snorted. "Makes sense that he hated you."

"Why do you say that?"

"Miller had a fondness for terror."

They'd reached the doors leading outside, and Natasha didn't reply as they stepped out. Nineteen breathed her first breath of fresh air in weeks. It had grown colder since her last time outdoors as winter officially settled around the United States. It was still early, and frost clung to the grass surrounding the building.

"I don't even know where we are. What state is this?" asked Nineteen.

"Virginia. I can't tell you exactly where, obviously." Natasha held out a black hood. "And you're going to have to wear this until we get a little ways out."

Nineteen rolled her eyes, but took the hood and shoved it over her head. The daylight was blocked out completely, leaving her blind. A hand wrapped around her upper arm and lead her a little ways on foot before helping her to clamber into a vehicle. Someone buckled her seat belt for her, and Nineteen felt a familiar prickle of discomfort at the memory of Miller doing the same thing.

They drove in silence for awhile. Nineteen was a little on edge due to being blindfolded, and though she had developed a certain tentative trust in Natasha, she didn't trust the men that accompanied them in any way. To add to the stress, she kept reminding herself that Natasha was doing this to throw off any potential tails. The idea that one of Miller's lackeys could be waiting to snatch her at any moment was a crushing weight on her chest that made her heart flutter with anxiety.

After a time, the hood was pulled from her head. Nineteen looked around to gain her bearings, noting that she was in the middle row of seats in a van. Natasha was sitting in the passenger seat, a man she'd never seen was driving, and the two guards were sitting behind her. Natasha shot her a slight smile and a wink before turning and facing back toward the windshield.

They drove for hours on back roads, past cornfields and horse farms. They entered Kentucky and then Tennessee, and the entire lower half of Nineteen's body began to go numb. She was used to travelling for long periods of time in rather uncomfortable situations, however, so she didn't complain or ask questions. The others didn't speak either other than to discuss the ETA every once in awhile.

After around five hours of driving, they entered a small town and eventually stopped at a little one story brick house. It looked completely normal from the outside, like someone's family home. It made Nineteen suspicious.

"This is a SHIELD safe house," said Natasha, sensing Nineteen's unease. "We're staying here tonight, and then you'll be moved tomorrow morning."

Nineteen only nodded in response. When the door was opened for her, she got out of the van. It was mid-afternoon by then, but there weren't any people out at the few other houses nearby. Nineteen figured the guards had gone for the dressed down look just in case someone here noticed them, and she wondered what exactly all of the regular people in this town would think if they knew there was a former enemy spy staying the night. She figured it was best she didn't find out.

They approached the house, and Natasha pressed a brick to the right of the front door. It popped out, revealing some kind of screen with a keypad next to it. Natasha pressed her thumb to the screen until it turned blue and then punched in a six digit code. There was a click, and Natasha pushed the brick back into place before striding through the now unlocked front door. Nineteen ran her hand over the "brick" as she passed, unable to fathom how the thing worked.

Inside, the house was furnished like a normal home, though everything was a little dusty. The driver planted himself in an armchair by the door while the other two men immediately went for the kitchen. Natasha gestured for Nineteen to follow her down a narrow hallway, and they stopped at a small bedroom with two twin beds in it.

"You and I are in here," Natasha told her. "There should be some other clothes in that dresser if you want to change or take any of them with you tomorrow. Bathroom's through that door. I'll be out here if you need anything."

She left then, allowing Nineteen some privacy. She immediately entered the bathroom, excited at the prospect of a shower. SHIELD had introduced her to just how incredible showers could be. Back with Miller, she was only allowed five minutes in freezing cold water, and someone else was always in the room to keep an eye on her. SHIELD had introduced her to hot water and allowed her as much time as she wanted. It had been the first luxury she'd experienced in a decade.

After locating some shampoo, soap, and towels, Nineteen took off her clothes and stepped beneath the warm spray. The water pressure definitely left something to be desired, but Nineteen still basked in it. After she was done washing, she stayed standing with her back to the water until it ran cold, wondering exactly how tomorrow was going to go.

Most of the things she'd faced in her life would make the majority of people quake with fear, but she had persevered through all of it. There were scars of the physical and mental kind, but Nineteen had still survived. Now, however, she was the one quailing in the face of the unknown. Though it had been a long time since she was part of society, she knew enough about how the world worked. She realized that she would need to do things like cook for herself and do laundry, and those tasks that anyone else would find simple and tedious were impossibly daunting to Nineteen. She was beginning to think she was in over her head, but there was no turning back now. She'd talked, given away all the secrets she had, and a swift execution would be all that awaited her if she went back.

Nineteen dried off after her shower and changed into some clothes she found in a drawer, just a pair of blue jeans and a white t-shirt. They fit better than the clothes Natasha had given her, but they still felt odd. She'd worn street clothes before when she needed to be disguised for a mission, but it had always felt like playing dress up. She'd grown used to combat attire and the spandex of her stealth suit. Everything else made her feel like she was dressing up as someone else.

There was a little cup on top of the dresser holding a few miscellaneous grooming tools. Nineteen shook the dust off of a comb and used it to sweep her wet hair back against her scalp. It was long enough that it was touching her neck now, longer than it had been in ten years. Her second night with Smith, he'd had some man with a pair of dull scissors hack off the long hair she'd loved so much, shortening it nearly all the way to the scalp in a haphazard cut that looked every bit as rushed as it was. She'd cried for the first time then, and it was also the first time someone hit her for showing weakness.

After that, her hair had been cut regularly, kept in a short military-style haircut that resembled the look most of the guards had. Her sense of vanity eventually died along with her modesty, and the short hair hadn't bothered her in a long time. However, she did feel a pang when she thought about Natasha's beautiful long red curls.

Nineteen wasn't really sure what to do after that. She wasn't even clear on whether she was allowed to leave the bedroom or if she was confined to it. Deciding to risk it, she padded silently down the hall, enjoying the unfamiliar feeling of plush carpet beneath her bare feet.

The kitchen she passed was still occupied by the two guards, who'd removed their guns and vests and were now talking animatedly while playing a game of cards. There was a tiny dining area next to the kitchen, and Natasha was there, unloading some kind of equipment from a big leather case she'd found somewhere. She looked very focused, so Nineteen decided to leave her be.

In the living room, the driver-turned-guard-dog had turned the TV on at some point, but he was no longer watching it and had instead turned his chair so that his back was to the rest of the room and he was facing toward the front windows. He was reading a book when he noticed her standing in the doorway of the room watching him. He gave her a little nod before returning his attention to what he was reading, and she felt reassured that she was allowed to be wandering around.

She sank down on the couch and sat awkwardly in the center of it, lightly drumming her index fingers on her thighs as she looked around the room. The TV eventually caught her attention though, and she marveled at the size of the screen and clarity of the picture. Nineteen had come across televisions in her missions but had been too focused on the tasks at hand to really admire just how far that particular technology had advanced since she'd lost touch.

TV hadn't been a luxury she'd enjoyed often before she was kidnapped. A lot of their rental houses hadn't had one, and her father never wanted to alter the places they stayed, knowing they wouldn't be there long anyway. Most of her watching time had been in hotels they'd stay in occasionally between towns. She remembered pixelated cartoons on a screen that sometimes blurred until you smacked the side of it, but this was _way_ better than that.

A movie was playing, some juvenile comedy that contained a lot of modern references that meant the humor went right over Nineteen's head. However, one look at the three separate remotes on the table told her she would be way out of her depth if she attempted to change the channel, so she didn't bother to try. From what she gathered after coming in in the middle and missing a chunk of the plot, the film was about a girl who changed her whole life just to impress and get back a man she'd loved and lost.

It was all rather ridiculous, but she found herself undeniably drawn to the main character. The woman was small and blonde like Nineteen, but she was everything that Nineteen wasn't: feminine, outgoing, ambitious…and most importantly, _not_ an ex-spy trying to bury years of psychological trauma.

In that moment, Nineteen envied the protagonist more than she'd ever envied anyone. What she wouldn't give to have her biggest problems be as simple as wanting someone that didn't want her back or passing college classes. Nothing could ever be that straightforward for her, but she desperately wanted a life that easy.

She walked away before the movie was over, feeling sour and moody. Natasha was still in the dining room working on the equipment she'd set up for herself at the table. Nineteen watched her tapping away at the keyboard of a laptop for a moment before Natasha spotted her and gestured for her to come over.

"Just in time," she said as Nineteen sat down in the chair next to her. "I have a question for you."

"Okay."

"I'm working on your papers. If you wanted, I can keep Melodie as your first name."

That had been the last thing Nineteen had expected to be asked, and the question made her frown. She remembered the deeply alienating feelings she'd had when they'd first branded her with the number and began using it as her name. Even before that, they would refer to her as "the asset" or simply "it". They'd tried to strip her of her humanity by erasing her identity, but now that she was being offered it back, she wasn't sure she wanted it.

"That name…doesn't really belong to me anymore. She was a little girl. She was innocent. That's not who I am now."

Natasha nodded in understanding but then smirked at her after a moment. "I can't exactly put your first name as 'Nineteen' on these."

"I don't want to be Nineteen anymore either," she admitted quietly. "I want to be someone else."

Natasha did that thing where she quickly turned off all the emotions on her face in order to hide something. "Do you want me to just make something up?"

Nineteen paused, thinking. She opened her mouth to agree to whatever Natasha wanted but then froze as she came up with a different idea. She remembered the girl from the stupid movie she hadn't even finished. She remembered how self-possessed the character had been, how she was sure of her place in the world and just so utterly _normal_. In that moment, Nineteen couldn't imagine anyone else she would rather be.

"Elle," she finally said.

"Elle?" Natasha asked skeptically. "That's what you want to be called?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

She flushed in response and shrugged, too embarrassed to actually tell her where she'd come up with the idea. Natasha let it go and began drawing up the papers, using the various instruments to make an ID, a passport, and a social security card and birth certificate.

"There you go," Natasha said finally, plunking down the documents on the table. "You're now Elle Christine Phillips."

The newly self-proclaimed Elle experienced an unexpected rush of satisfaction when she held the documents in her hands. They were fake, of course, and no matter how professional and legal they looked, they weren't real. But still, rebranding herself as someone other than what they wanted her to be was exhilarating.

It was a small step compared to the much larger one she'd already taken when she decided to defect, but it felt more significant. She hadn't just betrayed them, wasn't just putting them behind her. She was defying everything they'd done to her, unraveling all of the strategic programming they'd forced upon her and pulling out the scraps of a person they'd left behind to see what she could make of it.

She wasn't _theirs _anymore.

And it felt fantastic.

* * *

A/N: Hey everyone! I am back much earlier than I expected to be, and my finals are over! Wooo! This one is a bit shorter because I was so busy, but I'm already working on the next installment, so I should be updating more regularly now.

I have two quick things to say about this chapter. One: in case you didn't guess it, the movie that I was thinking of was Legally Blonde. I was trying to think of the exact opposite of her character, and a pink-obsessed law student sounded perfect, haha. Also (for any Stranger Things fans that may be reading this), I also really liked the idea of calling her Elle because of the parallels with Eleven, like being a kidnap victim who was forced to use her powers to help bad people.

Secondly, I know it might seem rushed that we're already moving away from the interrogation bit, but I'm planning on telling the stories Nineteen would have told Natasha in flashbacks. I thought hearing everything twice would get super repetitive, and I'd also rather tell the _real_ versions, considering the ones Nineteen would tell Black Widow would be a lie because she was leaving Bucky out. I know this chapter doesn't, but most of the others will have flashbacks in them to tell that part of the story.

This fic is also going to cover a lot of ground. Right now we're pre-Iron Man, and I'm planning on this going all the way through to right after Age of Ultron. There's going to be a couple time jumps coming up a couple chapters from now because I don't plan on spending too much time in Phase One of the MCU. Most of the actual plot of this will take place in Phase Two, and then I have a full sequel already plotted out that would take place in Phase Three.

I also added a couple more songs to the soundtrack on YouTube today! I'll be doing that from time to time, just whenever I find a new song that I find fitting. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear them!

As always, thanks everyone so much for the reviews, favorites, and follows! They mean the world to me!


	5. Heart Made of Glass

**2006**

Nineteen thought of little else but the Soldier in the days following the mission. She didn't get to see him, but whenever someone entered any room she was in, her eyes would dart up in the hopes that it would be him. She had no idea where he was kept or what he could possibly do between assignments, but that didn't stop her from looking for him everywhere she went. The distraction meant her performance suffered some in training, which lead to more bruises, but even that wasn't motivation enough for her to push him from her thoughts.

To Nineteen's utmost surprise, Miller had actually praised her on her execution of the mission in Zagreb, particularly her idea to stage everything as a break in. She assumed that meant her plan had worked and the fake USB drives had been used, but no one confirmed her theory.

The next mission came quicker than she expected, only four days after the first. It was more complicated than its predecessor and involved entering a government facility in order to listen in on a meeting between two ambassadors. Miller stressed that they were not to leave any bodies behind them this time around, as the people in the building would be much more important than maintenance men, but after watching the Soldier in action, Nineteen didn't think she could stop him from killing someone if he really got it in his head that he needed to.

While she was gearing up, the Soldier walked through the door, and Nineteen felt a sudden burst of glee that sent warmth spreading across her cheeks. He caught her staring at him while he was tightening the straps on his tactical vest and only paused to eye her for a moment before looking away disinterestedly. It reaffirmed that his memories of their most recent meeting were truly gone, and Nineteen felt that familiar rush of anger she got whenever she thought of that godawful chair.

Eventually, they found themselves sitting on a jet side by side. Again, the Soldier was silent and staring ahead, and Nineteen's face was burning with shame after Miller had buckled her seat belt for her a second time. Thankfully their team was smaller for this mission. Only two other men accompanied them, and they sat on the opposite side of the jet so that Nineteen and the Soldier were, for all intents and purposes, alone. After the jet was safely in the air, Nineteen detached her too-tight seat belt and took soothing breaths to calm her racing heart.

The flight was going to be longer this time since they were heading to a more distant part of Europe, and Nineteen recognized an opportunity to test out the first stage of her plan: getting the Soldier to remember her. If he didn't remember her, he'd never trust her. If he never trusted her, he'd never run away with her. And she wouldn't leave without him. She had to get this domino to fall in order to make sure the rest followed.

She clenched her hands around the seat beneath her nervously and took a couple deep more breaths before turning to him.

"Don't you remember me?" she began. She spoke in French, in the hopes that if she kept the conversation as close as possible to their previous encounter that it would spark something in him that brought up the memories.

The Soldier's head turned, and the intensity in his sky-colored eyes nearly sent Nineteen into cardiac arrest on the spot. She waited for him to say what he'd said before, to ask her if he should know who she was, but he didn't. He just stared, so she decided to further the script by herself.

"You saved me once when I was a little girl."

She waited, but he gave her nothing. There wasn't anything readable in his eyes except perhaps some annoyance. Nineteen's resolve was faltering in the face of the vacancy with which he was regarding her, but she knew she needed to press forward. If this didn't work, she didn't have a plan B.

"They had men beating me. You killed them, and you-"

"Stop talking."

His sudden interruption shocked her so much that she actually jumped. For a moment, she struggled to process his words. Had he really just told her to _shut up_? The Soldier had turned away again and was staring at the empty seats across from them as if she'd never spoken, and Nineteen surmised that talking to him again would not be the best idea. She sat back in her seat, feeling rather like she'd been slapped across the face.

He still didn't recall her or the two times they'd met in the past, and she had no clue where to turn next. It wasn't like she was an expert in memories or the psychology of them, but it was obvious now that talking to him about how they met wasn't going to work every time. She knew for certain the memories were still in there _some_where, but he'd just proven to her that what brought him back one time might not work the next.

The rest of their flight was spent in silence. The others napped, but Nineteen and the Soldier sat next to each other in stony silence instead, her beginning to think there was no way she'd ever be able to pull off an escape now that her one and only idea had been shot to hell.

When they landed, they exited the plane and drove to their destination in a black SUV. The guards parked them in the mostly-empty bottom level of a parking garage, and the Soldier and Nineteen climbed out. Unencumbered by an enormous gun this time around, Nineteen rolled her shoulders and mentally ran through the plan for infiltration while the Soldier put on his black mask.

Right as they were about to go, the Soldier suddenly turned his back on Nineteen and then stopped. She stared up at the back of his head in confusion, uncertain as to what he was doing. She cautiously peered around him, thinking maybe he'd heard someone coming, but there were no signs of an intrusion as far as she could see or hear.

The Soldier glanced at her over his right shoulder and then shrugged that same shoulder once, quickly and pointedly, like he was waiting for her to do something. It finally dawned on Nineteen that he had expected her to take hold of him, to turn them both invisible before they went inside.

She did so with a slightly trembling hand, and the second they were both out of sight, he began to lead her up to the ground level. Nineteen was barely focusing on where they were going, more preoccupied with the fact that he seemed to know she was supposed to touch his shoulder.

The previous time, he had seemed shocked and appalled when she touched him, recoiling from her like she was a snake. Now, he seemed to know exactly what was going on. Someone might have informed him before the mission, but she didn't think that was the case either. If that were true, he may have offered his elbow or hand, but it had specifically been his _shoulder_, the very same method she'd improvised during their last mission.

He'd turned to her just like he had in Zagreb, presenting his flesh shoulder and waiting for her hand to cover it. It was too similar, too much like something someone would do if they were familiar with a habit.

Sort of like…muscle memory.

* * *

The mission went off without a hitch, and Nineteen and the Soldier returned with the information Miller had needed. The Soldier was lead in a different direction than she was, presumably to give their mission report and then have his memories taken from him once again. Nineteen, meanwhile, was returned to her room with orders to wait for someone to come clean her up.

She sat on the floor with her back against the metal frame of her cot and thought. Her foot tapped, rattling the metal chain that kept her attached to the floor. She was concentrating so hard she didn't hear it. She didn't feel the cold or the hunger that gnawed at her stomach. All she could think about were the latest developments regarding the Soldier. She'd spent the whole flight back analyzing his behavior in the parking garage like a crazed psychiatrist, and now all she needed to do was turn her observations into something useful.

It couldn't be a coincidence that he remembered her holding his shoulder, and she was beginning to notice a pattern in the memories he was able to retain. He didn't appear to remember any of his previous missions, but he could remember exactly how to operate a gun. He didn't recall conversations, but he knew how to speak a wide variety of languages. She'd gathered that the chair must erase his memories selectively, taking away experiences and leaving behind motor functions, but she didn't know how to work that to her advantage. There just had to be _something_.

When the team came to drag her from her room, strip her down, and force her into a shower stall, she didn't gasp or curse when the frigid water hit her like she usually did. She stood there in silence as someone scrubbed her skin until it was red and raw and did her best to figure out a way to use the new realization to her advantage.

* * *

The third mission they went on was more of the same, just breaking into a building to steal some intel, though everyone seemed to be even more insistent on their success than usual. Their team was bigger this time, due to the apparent importance of that particular mission. Nineteen didn't engage the Soldier while they were en route in case it caught someone's attention, but she didn't even know what she would say if she did. She didn't want to push her luck, and she still hadn't come up with anything viable enough to implement as a new plan.

A big rifle was passed to her again, and Nineteen had to suppress a groan of annoyance. She'd known they would give it to her, especially since she might actually have to fire it this time, but she didn't hate the idea of being burdened with the thing any less.

Before she could even start making a fool of herself operating it in front of the others, the gun was removed from her hands. Nineteen had barely blinked by the time the Soldier had loaded it for her and placed it back into her arms. She wasn't sure who was more thunderstruck by the gesture, her or the others on the jet, but everyone was staring at the Soldier like he'd suddenly started yodeling.

He remembered loading her gun for her on their first mission. He might not know why he'd just done that, judging by the small crease between his eyebrows, but part of him knew he had to. So he did.

It was then that an idea hit Nineteen like an earthquake. All she would need to make it work would be a little patience.

**2007**

Their group of five left the Tennessee safe house a little after sunrise the next morning. The van drove to a nearby private airport where a special SHIELD aircraft called a quinjet was waiting for them. The flight was so smooth that Nineteen wasn't as uncomfortable as usual, though whenever she caught sight of the sky through the windshield, her nerves would return anew.

Several hours later, they landed at an airstrip on a military base, where a black SUV waited to ferry them to their next destination. After a fairly short and quiet drive, they arrived in an area that was filled with brick row homes that all looked like they should have been condemned years ago. It was street after street of the same thing. The people they passed as they drove looked at them with open suspicion and hostility. It was obviously a rough neighborhood, and they probably weren't used to seeing strangers just passing through. It certainly didn't look like a place that many people would visit.

The SUV came to a stop in front of one of the row houses, and all five passengers clambered out. Elle stared at her new home with narrowed eyes. The grass was so tall that it could brush their knees and had started encroaching on the sidewalk. The window frames had probably once been white but were now stained green, and the stoop leading to the front door looked like it was moments away from collapsing into dust. There was a chainlink fence around the front yard with a gate closing off the walkway leading to the front door. When one of the SHIELD agents went to open it, the gate collapsed, completing snapping off the hinges and clattering loudly to the ground.

"So, this is Michigan," Elle remarked, unable to keep the dry humor out of her tone. She'd seen the state on the ID Natasha had given her the day before.

"It's gotta be better than a cell and a shackle," Natasha replied. Elle privately agreed with her.

When they opened the front door, they were greeted with a similar situation to the house they'd stayed in the night before: dust-covered furniture, a musty odor that made Elle cough, and other telltale signs of neglect.

The other agents swept the house for squatters while Elle and Natasha walked to the kitchen. Elle swung her sadly lightweight backpack down on to the small kitchen table, sending a cloud of dust up into the air. Natasha threw open two of the cabinets, revealing a good supply of field rations left behind by SHIELD.

"Someone checks on the safe houses every once in awhile to make sure they're stocked," Natasha was saying, "so you should be good on supplies for awhile."

"And when I'm not?" Elle asked.

Natasha passed Elle a small pouch that fit in the palm of her hand. "That's what that is for."

Elle tossed Natasha a curious glance before she opened it. Inside was a sizeable wad of cash wrapped with a rubber band. Nineteen's mouth fell open, but no noise came out.

"Think of it as payment for your information."

"I thought that's what this place was for." Elle waved her hand around to signal the house in general.

"Then it's compensation for keeping you locked up for over a month, or for only getting to eat turkey sandwiches. Call it whatever you want," Natasha said, a glint of humor in her eyes. "Once it runs out, you're on your own though. I only managed to convince them to give you the one payout. After this, you're going to have to find another way to make money. And that doesn't include anything illegal. If you break the law and we find out, you'll be cut loose, and SHIELD won't help you if someone finds out where you are."

Elle swallowed hard, slowly pushing the zipper back into place with a numb hand. "Thank you."

She hadn't meant for it to come out sounding like a question, but it had. Natasha gave her a nod nevertheless, but they didn't get a chance to say anything else before one of the male agents appeared to tell them the house was clear.

Natasha nodded again and told the others to wait for her at the car. They obeyed, and after the sound of the front door closing behind them reached the kitchen, Natasha pulled a silver flip phone from her pocket.

"This is for you," she said. "My number is in here. If you ever suspect that you've been found or that you're being followed, call it. I might not be able to get here myself, but I can send someone."

Elle took the phone and slid it into the back pocket or her jeans. "Any other rules I need to be aware of?"

She'd meant it as a joke, but Natasha didn't take it as such. "Remember that you're lying low. Make up a fake backstory, don't draw attention to yourself, and most importantly: don't ever use your powers in front of anyone."

Elle tried to fight the urge to roll her eyes. She felt those rules were rather obvious, but she knew that it was important she followed them regardless, so she nodded to show Natasha that she understood.

"I've got to get going. I need to be on a jet to Europe within the hour," Natasha said.

She walked to the door, and Elle followed. When they reached the front door, Natasha turned around, and her eyes immediately zeroed in on Elle's hands where she was anxiously picking at her nails. She stilled, feeling childish under the redhead's knowing gaze.

"There's something else for you. I put it in your bag before we left this morning," said Natasha.

"What is it?"

"My…boss was able to find some information on your past." Elle felt the bottom fall out of her stomach. "Everything we got is in there. I would just advise that if you decide to go down that road, remember that you were a victim. Anything that they did because of you, you can't be blamed for it."

Elle couldn't tell whether or not she was imagining the sympathetic tone in Natasha's voice, but the words themselves still felt like ice in her chest. Robotically, she nodded. Natasha offered her one last small smile before she left.

The lock clicking into place behind her sounded like a cannon blast in the silence left behind. Elle felt as if the house was suddenly caving in around her, crushing her under tons of brick and drywall. She hadn't truly been alone in a decade, and she'd thought it would be so liberating once she was freed. Instead, she found the loneliness stifling, especially after the bombshell Natasha had dropped before she left.

To distract herself both from the encroaching panic attack and the knowledge of what awaited her in her backpack, Elle decided to take a self-directed tour through her new home. The lower level consisted of the living room and the cramped kitchen, which were only separated by a half-wall, allowing Elle to see the backdoor when she was standing at the front. The backyard was a postage stamp sized patch of grass that was as overgrown as the front yard and was bordered by a second chainlink fence. There was a frighteningly narrow staircase that lead upstairs to two bedrooms and a single bathroom. Elle decided to make the bedroom with the bigger bed hers and checked the dresser to find more of the same nondescript, gender neutral clothing as she'd found at the safe house from the night before. There was a tiny closet as well, which was empty except for a single black windbreaker.

Elle removed the dark blue comforter from the bed and shook it as hard as she could to remove the layer of dust it had accumulated. Afterwards, she placed it back on the bed and sat down on top of it, looking around at the off-white walls surrounding her. She was stalling her return downstairs where she would be faced with nothing to do but open her backpack and look her past in the face. There were things she remembered from her childhood, but for the most part, those days had begun to feel like a blank spot in her brain that she couldn't make sense out of no matter how hard she tried. When she had been a captive, it had felt easier to just not remember the time before, when she was just a child who didn't understand how cruel the world was. After a time, she supposed her recollection of those days simply faded into the background as a coping mechanism. It was easier to be a heartless, thoughtless tool when she could pretend that she'd never been anything else.

Eventually there was nothing left to do but get it over with. Her shuffling, hesitant footsteps left scuff marks in the dust layer on top of the hardwood floors as Elle returned to the kitchen and unzipped her backpack. She moved aside a rolled up pair of pants to find an old folder, declaring in French that it was a missing person's case from a small town in France.

Elle swallowed hard against the feeling of her throat tightening and sat at one of the kitchen chairs. It creaked dangerously but held her weight as she began to read about a little girl named Melodie Roux who disappeared into thin air ten years ago.

Most of what she read she already knew, but there were some surprises. For instance, Elle hadn't actually known how old she was, and there was something very reassuring about knowing that small fact about herself. There was also a copy of her mother's autopsy report which declared she had been killed by a falling beam when the house collapsed around her and not by the actual fire itself. The coroner who performed the autopsy had written a series of baffled notes that claimed that there didn't seem to be any damage to her body from the fire at all. Elle thought that was rather peculiar, but chose to file away that mystery for later due to the sheer amount of documents she still had left to read.

There were old report cards from the many schools she'd attended to remind Elle that she had once been a good student. There were witness statements from neighbors and acquaintances from the last town they'd lived in before Smith took her. She was rather surprised to see that there were people who had assumed at the time that she may have already been a kidnap victim and that her father wasn't actually related to her at all. Elle knew her father tended to be a little standoffish, but she still found it hard to believe that anyone could think him capable of _that_.

By the time she reached the last few pages of the file, night had set in and Elle had been forced to turn on the overhead lamp in the kitchen. It was old and dim, only just managing to cast enough light for her to read by. The kitchen table was covered in sheets of paper. She had the documents organized in piles in front of her by what period of her life they pertained to.

Elle's eyes were burning from the strain of reading for so long in poor light when she picked up the last document. It was several pages stapled together with a cover sheet on top. She had to blink several times to get her eyes to focus on what she was reading, but when she finally managed to get the title to make sense in her mind, her heart dropped straight through the floor.

It was another autopsy report. This one was for her father.

Many times in Elle's life, she'd experienced something that was rather like standing outside of her body and watching helplessly as something happened to her. It happened when she received her first beating. It happened when she watched the Soldier having his memory erased. It happened the first time she killed someone. And it happened again when she turned the page of the report and saw the pictures of her father's body hanging from the rafters in the same apartment where she'd last hugged him goodbye.

She couldn't bear to read the whole thing. Elle skimmed enough to see that the police thought he'd committed suicide, and assumed she had run out of fear when she found his body. She knew the truth though, and finally it made sense why Smith had left his man "Jones" behind with her father. She'd always thought that perhaps he'd never come after her because he was glad to see her go along with the stress that came with taking care of her. Now she could see the truth, and it hurt even worse than assuming he'd wanted to be rid of her.

She closed the folder and set it on the table. Her body began to flicker as tears spilled over onto her cheeks, but no amount of breathing exercises helped. Elle went to push away from the table and stand up, but the legs on the chair beneath her splintered and finally gave way, collapsing with a loud crack and sending her to the floor.

Elle didn't bother getting up. She sat there on top of the broken chair and watched as her hands blinked in and out of sight. Her world felt like it had tipped slightly and was no longer on its axis. She was spinning out of control with no rhyme or reason to the direction.

Without warning, bile rose to her throat and she only managed to get to her hands and knees before she was vomiting on the floor. Once her stomach was empty, she still heaved, and once the heaving was done, she began to sob. Crawling only far enough so she didn't fall face first into her own vomit, Elle laid face down on the floor.

Though her thoughts were racing, there was one single memory that was floating around in her head, coming back again and again. They hadn't celebrated holidays on the run, but for once, her father had felt safe enough to stay in one location for over a year, and the change in his demeanor had been extreme enough that he decided to break one of his rules. He'd decided to go all out for her seventh birthday, taking her to a nearby zoo, baking her a huge pink cake, and actually buying her a gift. She remembered the tiny white toy horse as clearly as she could remember the pure joy she felt when she unwrapped it.

Only a week later they'd gone back on the run, and Elle had been forced to leave behind the toy horse. Until that moment, she had forgotten about it, but now the memory of it felt like the only thing tethering her to sanity.

The coolness of the cheap floor tile against Elle's cheek was oddly soothing, and after a time, her sobbing quieted and she stopped flickering. Still, she stayed on the kitchen floor until sleep took her, dreaming of chasing a white horse that was always just far enough that she couldn't reach it.

* * *

A/N: Sorry this one took longer than usual. My husband took some time off, so we had a nice little "staycation" at home for a few days. :)

So this is another short one. I intended for it to be longer, but sometimes it just feels like the chapter ends naturally and I don't like to push it past that. Right after I post this, I will be starting on the next one, so hopefully it will be out sooner than this one.

As always, thanks so much for all the support! I really appreciate you guys!


End file.
